Anyone have their fuel gauge die on them? On Saturday my car completely died while driving down the road and would not restart. The car sounded normal but would not turn over. Fuel gauge was showing a little over 1/4 tank. I had the car towed to my local shop.

Today I stopped by the shop to get some stuff I need out of the car. They told me that they added about $3 of gas and it started with no problems and drove it about 4 miles. So it appears that the fuel pump is checking out ok. Their theory (and they're testing it out tomorrow) is that the fuel gauge is shot...similar to problems found in many TTs.

Anyone know how expensive this is? They made it sound like the entire instrument cluster needed to be shipped off to get fixed (i.e. it's not a drop-in replacement deal). My car is a 2005.5
2.0t with 59K miles (6 speed).

Thanks

 

My son's BMW had a similar problem. The fuel gauge would work about 50% of the time, show completly empty the other 50% of the time. Rather than fix it, he decided to do the watch the mileage and re-fill at 300 miles, which on his 320ic, was a very safe distance.

However, I'd have your fuel sending unit in the tank checked before sending out the gauge cluster. More often than not, it is the sending unit that is bad.

 

It might not be the actual fuel gauge that is shot it could be the sending unit inside the gas take that is broken, I had the same problem in my A4. It constantly read that I was on empty and I wasnt, as soon as I replaced the sending unit it was fine it cost about 130 from the dealership.