I've never seen the "low fuel" light or message on the message board before, and I've ran it below a 1/8 of a tank once or twice. But it looks as if my fuel tank is the 27 gal. version as I can only put 20-21 gallons in it at a time.

'05 F-150 STX xcab 4x4

 

It shouldn't. With the engine off and by the time you have to go back in for the pre-pay bull nowadays the sediment should have settled back down. Besides, at the low fuel light you have gone too far anyway.

 

On my '88 Ranger (purchased new, owned for 200K miles) I ran the tank dry two fill-ups in a row; engine cut out both times while coasting into the gas station. I was trying to be cute and figure out the last mile I could go on a tank full (305 miles). The truck had maybe 30-40K miles on it at that time, and was about 3 years old. After filling up the second time, the engine developed a stutter under load that wouldn't go away until taken to the dealer, where they replaced the fuel pressure regulator for $345 and that fixed the problem. Needless to say I never let it get completely empty after that.

 

Back in the high school days I would always run my vehicle down to empty. I ran out of gas a few times and walked home. My wife was always a "fill up at 1/4 tank" person. She has trained me to be the same way. So I haven't ran out of gas since then and fill up at 1/4 tank always. For all of the above reasons in the previous threads, I think it's a good practice.

 

I prefer to fill-up at the 1/2 tank mark.

at $4.30 to $4.50 a gallon for 87 octane, it just mentally hurts less to put 1/2 tank. when it's 1/4 tank or less, the pump stops at the $100 mark. I just feel stupid having to re-swipe my debit card to get those last 2-3 gallons

 

That makes sense. It never reached that high here so it never took $100 to fill up. I've never had to pay $4 or over.

 

It took me $135 to fill up my truck on my last fill up, the low fuel light came on for the first time. I also try not to let it go below a 1/4 tank but I needed to run out my 87% octane so I could reprogram my edge for 92% octane. I noticed a big difference in performance on level 3. Tow mode felt like my tranny was going to explode when you hit the gas, flawed setting?