variable gas gauge
 

When I'm driving, I've noticed that my gas gauge doesn't go down at a consistent rate. When I'm trekkin up a hill, I'll watch the needle sink relatively quick. But when I get to the top, on flat ground, it'll go back up some. And on the freeway the needle slowly goes down, but then when I get on the streets it'll goe down quicker.

Is this normal for an 83GSL. It's causin me problems. One day I was going up hill and the needle was on E, but before it was a little above it. I figured that the guage was lying, and it was just cause I was goin uphill. But then the car actually did run out of juice on the hill.

Is their a way to fix this. Such as a new fuel pump, or just running the fuel pump for sometime before I actually start it.

Yea this is normal, even my non mazda cars are like this. There's a little float inside the gas tank connected to a rod, then connected to a variable resistor, which registers on the gauge. So when the gas is sloshing around the float moves with it. That's why your gas guage will slowly move up and down. So when you go uphill or accelerate the gas guage drops rapidly, then when you stop accelerating the guage slowly rises back up, because all the gas is shoved back towards the rear part of the gas tank.

As for the running out of gas part, to advoid this i usually fill up around 1/4 of a tank. There's a tube that runs inside the gas tank, where it's placed i don't know, but if it's in the middle, and your low on gas, if you acclerate hard enough, as before the gas will be pushed to the back wall, and there won't be enough available for the tube to suck out. Don't worry it's not the fuel pump.

Hope this helps
-Matt

I think I read about the procedure for cleaning the part that goes in the tank. If I recall correctly, you remove it from the top, clean it off, and reinstall it. Supposed to be easy and quick. Of course, I could be completely wrong. I would recommend running a search to see if you can find something on it. Good luck....