Freightliner gauges!

FYI I was reading that now a days some Freightliners have an Ultrasonic fuel level sensor. It uses sonar to determine the level.
Neat idea, but what a way to make things more complicated on the road.

 

You need to bend it a little. That is the “adjustment”.

 

You can hammer the tank with a stick and get the same idea. I like to use a yard stick, shove it into the tank. So many inches gets you roughly so many miles.

Trust the blessed engineers designing stuff and ignore what worked 50 years ago. the more they over design something the worse it will get.

I remember some cars about the mid 00's failing to rev engine inside a parking lot. They knew there were cars around them and gave you derated engine in first gear to move. If you neutraled it and floored it, it would not budge from idle either.

The more these cars show up, the more i am determined to keep my old mid 90's vehicle on the road. Fortunately it's not that hard.

 

The stick method is good but makes you nervous always guessing if there is enough fuel!

 

I can run on fuel as long both tanks have enough to get into the hole at the end. But when the fluid levels reach half that hole it's long past time to find a place to park legally. And it's just enough to reach the fuel pumps on that truckstop. Ive exercised that theory three times in my life and it worked well.

ATS gave me a one tank freightliner. Causing a need for two minimum a maximum of four fuel stops every 24 hours OTR. At times I could not proceed anywhere but the fuel pumps because of the logs. (It's recorded in those days, qualcomm and fuel card time stamp which has to agree with logs. Which means a midnight fueling no earlier. And running the engine was verboten. So you learned to light a large pail candle in sand ballast which will provide some heat while you wait until 10 after midnight for that fuel.

Appointments will just have to be changed and takes care of itself. Now if ATS cared to give me a proper two tank 335 gallon tractor, I would not have lost all this time clucking and nursing over fuel.

 

The fuel gauges bounce all over the place on my classic. One day I'll get around to fixing them but they are low on the priority list. I can guesstimate my mileage pretty well and write down the mileage i fill up at so i know when i better stop and full up next time.