minor annoyance, and a question....

[plusaf]

driving at night with the instrument panel at full brightness, which i find most comfortable for these old eyes, i noticed a green reflection on the front windshield....

the speedo cluster was lighting up part of the dashboard, and that was reflecting as a faint but noticeable and distracting diagonal green line/patch, right above the field of vision of the road ahead.

have any of you noticed that or been annoyed by it?

will cutting the dash lights back to "night automatic setting" help? i didn't want to fumble around on that first night drive....

thanks!

ps.
the first fuel tank box went out today, at about 140 miles on the odo!
is it pretty linear from then on? nobody's mentioned that, as far as i've seen....

[efusco]

Yes, dim those dash lights. It might be easier to see the dash display with it that bright, but it's bad for driving as it constricts the pupils and diminishes your ability to see the more dim light outside the vehicle and, thus, is a bit of a safety issue. If you dim the light the little green light on the windshild will also go away.

[Bill60546]

Evan is right, dim those dashboard lights. The screen has a brightness feature which can be adjusted for convenience, if needed.
Also, as best I can calculate, each square is 1.2 gallons (10 squares divided by 12; I like nice round numbers). If you got 140 miles on one, I'd question something. Its most likely better to double check your mileage when you fill up. Keep the receipt and use it to calculate your miles. (miles driven divided by gallons filled; be sure NOT to "top off" the tank). I've found the car's calculated mileage and the "manual method" is pretty close, even in city driving. Just as a personal benchmark, so long as I beat John1701a's monthly MPG, thats good enough for me.

[Bob Allen]

Is there an automatic night dimmer for the panel lights? I've been rotating the little dimmer wheel slightly to pop the lights down into night mode, but thought it would be handy if a light sensor would note the ambient outside light and do it for me.
B

[daniel]

My gas gauge is fairly linear and fairly consistent, at a bit less than one gallon per bar. Other people have reported severe non-linearity, and I'm not sure, but I think some have also reported serious inconsistency from one tank to the next.

Use john1701a's odometer method for keeping track of your gas, and after a few tanks you should have a fair idea how yours functions.

[efusco]

Is there an automatic night dimmer for the panel lights? I've been rotating the little dimmer wheel slightly to pop the lights down into night mode, but thought it would be handy if a light sensor would note the ambient outside light and do it for me.
B

There is auto-dimming when you turn your headlights on, but it is not sensitive to ambient light. Thus, if you leave your headlights on at all times (day and night) you'll have to continue to manually adjust or find a happy medium.

[jasond]

My gas gauge definitely isn't linear. Among other things, the first bar usually takes a long time to go out, and then the next two or three go pretty quickly.

[rockluvr]

I agree with jasond - the gas gauge is definitely not linear. There has been numerous postings about this. It doesn't bother me because I have never had a car that had a linear gauge. They always would go down slowly for the first half of tank and then MUCH quicker for the remainder. My Prius is no exception to this.

[plusaf]

I agree with jasond - the gas gauge is definitely not linear. There has been numerous postings about this. It doesn't bother me because I have never had a car that had a linear gauge. They always would go down slowly for the first half of tank and then MUCH quicker for the remainder. My Prius is no exception to this.

yep, my taurus was like that, too.. the top half of the gauge took forever to go, then the bottom half dropped like a rock...

i think the dealer may have topped off the tank, too... if the first block is 1.2 gallons, i got over 100 mpg on the highway at 70-72 mph.... LOL!
the computer says it's averaging about 43.7 or something like that.. much more reasonable, since i've run the a/c pretty much on automatic most of the time.