At 02:58 PM 10/20/2009, Don Hanson wrote:
>The way it was 'splained to me, and this works for my 84...the first
>mark is 1/4 tank gone, the second is 1/2 The third is 3/4 and the
>top of the red zone is 1/4 tank left.  It's not "Reserve" but it's
>what is considered to be the end of the 'safe' fuel capacity zone
>from a German Engineer's point of veiw.

The owner's manual is clear that "top of the red" means about 10
liters (2.64 US Gal, 2.2 Imp Gal)  remain.  If your isn't doing that
then either gauge is misadjusted or sender (or tank) is bad.

>The spacing on the gauge face and the relative size of the lines has
>nothing to do with anything that I can see..At first, since the
>first line is about halfway across the dial and is twice as big as
>the other white marks, I just thought automatically it was 'half-full'.

Half-full is how the gauge has behaved on both my '84 and '89.  Do
you really think that der Volks at VDO would put significant-looking
marks on the gauge for no reason?  We're more used to them putting on
tiny insignificant-looking marks that are intensely meaningful

>  And I thought the last white line was quarter full, leaving the
> Red to mean "reserve"...but someone set me straight...

If you consider that "quarter-full" *includes* the reserve, should
come out somewhere near right.

I think your source is confused, likely by a bad gauge/sender combination.

Yrs,
David