just purchased a 96 prelude si a week ago. excellent running car with 222k mi. however, a bit of a guzzler. i had 3-4 bars left on the way to work today and 3 bars when I arrived to work. the gas light was on and off so I assumed it was still okay. but after a few blocks my car wanted to shut down. i tapped the gas pedal harder and can feel the car lose power. finally it shut down and when i looked at the meter again there were no bars left. i turned off the car and back on, it fired up effortlessly. the gas meter showed 2 bars. i was able to drive it to a gas station to fill up, but it took only 12 gallons. what can be the problem? I know the fuel capacity is 14.9 gallons so what happened to the other 3?

 

Other three gallons? Your Prelude Si should have a fuel tank capacity of 15.9 gallons. Sounds like a bad fuel gauge in your cluster or possibly a faulty fuel level sender/sensor.

 

Faulty fuel level sender/sensor, interesting. Is this part of the fuel pump?

 

its near the fuel pump as far as I know. Try replacing it if you have the time to do so.

 

sounds like more than just your gas gauge is faulty if your car is dying. you could start with checking clogged fuel filter.

 

Will do, hopefully the part's not too expensive. I will definitely look into it. Thanks man.

 

I ordered tune-up parts already which includes a fuel filter which everything should arrive today. Hope I can get it all done this weekend. Thanks for the advice.