Miles to empty mystery, 440K Q

[2021 TRD off road] After a little adventure with bad fuel (which is now fixed, I had the tank drained, no tank or bed removal) my “miles to empty” full tank reading goes to 385 miles; before the fuel issue it only went up to about 260. Does anyone know what happened or how to reset it that so it’s accurate?

Also any recommendations or warnings for putting a can of 440K in the fuel tank? My odometer is at about 36K.

 

How do you know it's not accurate now?

Snake oil. Likely will only hurt your wallet though.

 

20 gallon tank x say, 16 mpg = 320 to empty. Either I was getting terrible gas mileage before; I’m getting amazing gas mileage now; or the reading needs to be calibrated.

 

It will prob. learn better with a few tankfuls.

 

Miles to empty is a guesstimate by the little man in the dash.

EPA says 21 gal tank and 17mpg combined MPG or 357. But seriously, I suspect it's a learning module that will drop with time.

 

If the battery was disconnected for a long period, I would say that’s normal.
Keep driving the truck. It may take 3 tanks for the DTE to average out.

 

Mine always says 361 to empty when I top off... Has been consistent since I bought the truck. 2021

 

Maybe a few tank fulls will do it.

 

It's adaptive.

 

Ignore it. It will eventually figure out something close, but I'd still ignore it, never trust it. Most useless feature on newer vehicles.

My Tacoma is old enough that it doesn't have that feature, but our Explorer and F150 do. A couple of weeks ago we drove the F150 to the top of Mt Washington. It is a STEEP 7.5 mile climb, then a STEEP 7.5 mile drop to the bottom. I started up with 1/2 full 36 gallon tank. But the road was steep enough in both directions that the fuel all went to the back of the tank on the way up, and the front of the tank on the way down.

When I started the truck for the drive down, I got a low fuel warning showing 35 DTE and the fuel gauge was below "E". By the time I was 1/2 way down it was showing 0 DTE. It took a good 30-40 minutes of driving after we got off the mountain before everything was close again.

I've also been stuck in traffic because of an accident. DTE showed 108 when I hit the slowdown. Took an hour to drive 4 miles and DTE was at 88 miles when traffic started moving.

 

The DTE is just a calculation, different vehicles have different methods of calculating it. Essentially it takes the estimated quantity of fuel in the tank based on what the fuel level sensor reads and the average MPG for the last x miles (usually around 50-100 but varies by vehicle) and gives you an estimate of how far you can go on the fuel remaining. Usually they are pretty conservative for safety reasons.
As others said it may take several tanks of fuel for it to stabilize especially if it was running really shitty before and/or it was reset from a battery disconnect.

 

I don’t know why anybody looks at or pays any attention to the miles to empty. It is purely an electronic guess. It is inaccurate. If you depend on it to tell you how far to go before you need to refuel or if you can make it to the next town with the amount of gas you have, then you will find yourself in deep shit. There are dozens of unknown variables the little pos mte can’t know or factor , thus, a lousy guess at best. In other words useless.

 

I recently did a trip from WV to Chesapeake, VA to visit some friends. Before my trip the computer stated 342 miles until empty. I ended up driving a total of 425.5 miles with approximately 10 gallons remaining before filling up my tank. I was running 87 ethanol free gas and have been for a few months now.