07-28-2013, 01:54 AM
(07-28-2013, 01:38 AM)Firstfour_imp Wrote: I'm of the mind that reading too low is better than too high, wouldn't want to end up pushing this big baby. And yes, I'm a one-bar panic. Really though, I'm just going by the trip odometer and not paying as much attention to the fuel gauge. Probably due to all the old bikes I've owned not even having one!
+1 on preferring too low over too high...
From what I understand designing a fuel level gauge must be hard. The fuel is sloshing around all the time fore and aft, left and right. The only thing you can hope to get is some kind of an average of all the fluctuating readings (either have a sender that tells what the level is at some place in the tank accurately and average the readings over time, or have some kind of damped reader that doesn't respond quickly to fluctuating level changes and get some kind of average from the reader itself).
Either way it seems hard to do, full of tradeoffs.
I wonder how aircraft do it.. I hear that they measure fuel by mass.. now that seems like it might be easier to get a read on (when the plane is flying straight and level at constant velocity, which is probably most of the time (?)).