Well, I ran my (1 month old of my ownership) truck below a 1/4 of a tank for the first time yesterday and found out that my fuel gauge is inaccurate the hard way =(

I've always run my vehicles almost to the empty mark every time before I fill up and I've never run out of gas/diesel before.

Driving back to work from lunch my truck just turned off. These things are not easy to control at 40mph when your truck cuts out and you lose power steering and brake boost coming up behind somebody at a stop sign. I quickly stomped the parking/emergency brake but that doesn't do much for me. Then contemplated throwing the truck into park and risking dropping the tranny. I decided it was better to post up holding the bottom of the steering wheel and both feet on the brake lifting myself out of the seat to be a better idea. The guy in front had just started to move as I got there and had he not started moving I MIGHT have hit him. I was too close for my comfort.

I then had a friend passing by with a little Honda SUV pull me out of the road with some of my tow straps I use to help OTHER people out. It was humiliating

The fuel gauge still said I had diesel so I tried cranking it a few times and it would turn over but not start. I had a million things going through my head, clogged fuel filter, busted lift pump (common), busted VP44, I didn't know what to do.

I knocked on the fuel tank a few times. Bone dry and still showing a bit more than an 1/8th of a tank of diesel left. Filled it back up enough for comfort after about 5 trips back and forth with a $10 dollar 2gallon fuel tank, gas stations are rip offs. Thank god for friends with time on their hands =)

After the tank had some diesel in it, I tried cranking it a few times. Got nothing. Hit the water separator drain valve on the filter canister and just about drained it entirely and it appeared to be mostly water, almost no coloration. Turned the key and the lift pump primed and tried to crank. Got nothing. I waited a few more minutes and tried again for 30 seconds as stated in the Haynes manual. Nothing again.

AAA'd the truck home (thanks Tally12V) and it turns out the guy who towed me was a diesel mechanic. He said I likely needed to crack the lines. He had nothing better to do as it was almost 10pm by the time we got back to my place so he decided to help out

The truck finally turned over after repeatedly cracking the lines and ran like crap for about about 2 minutes. After that, all is good. I drove it to work this morning.

Lessons Learned:
Never run your truck low =)
Never run your truck low =)
oh, and NEVER RUN YOUR TRUCK LOW

Hope this experience will help someone somewhere, lol.

Speaking of inaccurate fuel gauges, can I recalibrate this thing or do I have to just replace the sender unit/whole assembly? I'll probably answer my question once I get some time to do some good searching, but if anybody has any links to past issues, I'd much appreciate it.

 

Same thing happened to me! You can replace just the gauge sending unit on the basket that goes in the tank. Thats what I had to do and now it is dead on accurate! Worse part was I took out my lift pump with it and had to have the truck towed on a flat bed. Wasn't a fun day!