Ok, here's the story, please read and try to understand, it's lengthy but I tried to give as much detail as possible.

I just bought an 04 WRX, and it has 11k on it. My first full tank of gas went in last week sometime. Reset trip odo.
I clocked 104 miles on the trip odo before I even got down to the Full increment. After that, it would read either the same or 1/8 tank (or a little more) less than when I shut the car off. Upon driving for a while, the guage would go back to a logical level and stay there. Fine.

Today, upon arriving at work, the gauge read a hair under 1/2 tank. At lunch, the gauge read just over 1/4 tank, and then went back almost up to normal after a while. This afternoon (after driving home) it was at 7/16 of a tank (1/16 less than half tank..
When I went to class tonight, the fuel light came on. WHAT THE??????? Barely less than half tank and I have a lit fuel light. It went off after 2 or 3 minutes, and did the same thing on the way home..

The trip odo now has 304 miles on it, which I'm pretty sure is a lot of mileage for what the gauge reads (7/16 tank)

So my question is, is this normal and do the fuel gauges suck that bad, or do I have a faulty gauge or tank sending unit??????

Please share your input, I'm very paranoid that I'm going to run out of gas even though the gauge says I have almost half a tank......

take it to your dealer and explain to them exactly what you explained here. Your car should be under factory warranty, so they should take care of it. Don't go in there saying "my gas guage is wrong" Explain to them why you think it is wrong....

They may not be able to find a problem, it could just be a fluke, but monitor the situation and document everything. Give them a chance to figure out what is going on. It may take leaving the vehicle overnight or returning a few times, but in order to get it taken car of, it will take patience.

Yeah, that's my probable plan of action. Unfortunately I don't have a Suby dealer that I trust within 40 minutes of me.. There is only one and they have quite the crappy reputation.. Ugh..
I hope I have enough gas to get to a gas station tomorrow..

My 04 OBS was somewhat similar. The light would come on at a quarter of a tank and I still had lots of gas when it read empty and stuff. My car was built in May of 2003 and I bought it in May of 2004. It spent the first year of its life on a ship, in lots and on trucks with little or no gas in the tank. Guess what? Condensation. Not only was the gauge a problem, but acceleration was choppy as well. After about three tanks of treated gas (Redline Fuel System Cleaner and Water Remover), acceleration was smooth and the gauge started behaving itself. Maybe you have a similar problem.

The car has 11k miles on it, shouldn't it be flushed out by now???

No, not really. Unless you run some sort of treatment through there, its still there. In fact, the owner's manual even suggests that you don't run the tank very low due to the crud in the bottom.

Over time it will suck, but I've never had my guage read differently after shutting the engine off. After a few years it'll get lazy in places, and even on my new Impreza the guage is a bit lazy near 1/2 level mark.

u are parking on hills

buy gas, then get thee to a dealer.....

Iirc, the gauge needle sensor and the low fuel light sensor are separate. If you've got 304 miles on the tank, and the low fuel light is on I'd say you best be looking for an open gas station...at least based on my 67k miles of experience ;)

Assuming the low fuel sensor is unaffected by the problem, you can figure ~1.5 gal. max fuel left when it comes on. On my car the light comes on very close to a 14 gal. fill pretty consistently; 304 miles therefore = ~22mpg.

The gauge on my 04 rex is off ~ 25%. @ the half way mark I can fill 9+ gallons. When I get a low fuel light I have ~20 miles of fuel left or ~1 gallon. I found out the hard way too. Since then, the 1/4 full mark is "bingo" fuel for me. Local dealer: "yea, thats pretty typical" I may have the guys down in metrology look at when things slow down this winter. At any rate, don't feel alone.

FWIW,
N

No car's gas guage is complete;y accurate. Even in my husbands mustang..once it gets at 1/2 tank, it sucks down the gas. I think it has to do with the design of the tank. No tank is complete "square". to measure it accurately. That's also why when you go around a corner, or take off hard, sometimes the guage reads different

The worst Subaru is the 95 Impreza L....

I drive with a full tank... So I go to work which is like 20 Miles, turn off the car and when time to go home, I drive 20 miles back to home and by this time I'm nearing if not allready a half a tank.. I'm like *** is going on here.

Iirc, the gauge needle sensor and the low fuel light sensor are separate. ...
Not really. Roughly speaking, the fuel tank has two chambers connected by their upper parts. There are actually two fuel level sensors, one in each chamber, and two fuel pumps, the main one (active, pumping to engine) in the main chamber and the secondary one (passive venturi effect, pumping to main chamber) in the second chamber.
The car's electronics (instrument panel CPU) add the resistances of the two fuel level sensors together to calculate how much fuel is left, setting the fuel gauge needle, and turning on the low fuel light when necessary. The low fuel light gets turned on once the sum of the two fuel levels stays low enough for 10 minutes or 10 kilometers.

The worst Subaru is the 95 Impreza L....

I drive with a full tank... So I go to work which is like 20 Miles, turn off the car and when time to go home, I drive 20 miles back to home and by this time I'm nearing if not allready a half a tank.. I'm like *** is going on here.


Word. My gas guage is no where near accurate anymore. Full to half way is about 100 miles and half to waaay below E is another 200 miles. Even when the needle is pretty much pointing straight down, I still have about 1.5 gallons left.
I've gotten used to it, but it was pretty annoying for the first few months I owned the car.

Reset your trip odometer every time you fill up. When you are ~ 250/300 miles, fill up the tank.

You won't run out of gas and you will develop a mathematic model of fuel consuption that will give you a heightened sense of distance.