Fuel gauge stuck on full

[DaveVA78Chieftain]

EBAY

Tanks.inc

Dave

[Froggy1936]

Tip : neopreme very good Cork bad ! Frank

[TripleJ]

EBAY

Tanks.inc

Dave

I believe that is the one.  And actually I used the info in the links to find the part number LO47. Hopefully I can take that to a local place and pick one up

[cncsparky]

Most boat and marine dealers should have something like that will work.  Same one I use on my boat.

[TripleJ]

Since I live basically ON the St Clair river, I am surprised there arent more plain old boat parts and repair places around.  There are plenty of marinas with their own shops inside, but Im not exactly on a walk-in basis in them. 

Luckily for the likes of me, Oreillys is able to order parts from a wholesaler that is basically right next door.... that of course doesnt sell to the public...  I found this out on a Saturday, but got impatient and wanted to get this thing back together on Sunday so I didnt want to wait.  What I did was take a stiff wire brush to the old gasket, which was still quite supple, and then smear a coat of black RTV over the surface with my fingers.  I ended up with a nice rubbery seal again.

I made up a new ground strap and a new wire to connect to the fuel gauge and put together a two pin bullet type disconnect in case I need to drop this tank in the future.  The ring terminal goes to the ground bolt, and the red wire gets soldered to the fuel gauge wire.  Easy peasy



Here is the whole deal; repaired tank, cleaned up sender, new wiring and all new fuel hose, ready to lift into place.  Yes there are substantial loops of fuel line because I dont want to have to stretch or bend or pinch wires or lines when dealing with this tank.  On this setup there is NO access to the top of the tank when it is installed.  I did my best to ensure that nothing would be rubbed or pinched when the tank was in place, we will see how this works out in the long run.




When it was all together, I dumped a 5 gallon jug of fuel in and went to key ON.  To my shock and dismay, the fuel gauge was STILL showing over full, meaning there was still an open circuit somewhere.  There is truly NO reason for this, so I held my breath, fired 'er up and headed out to the gas station to drop $50 in.  Before I even got there, the gauge had recovered and went to E where it should be.  After adding fuel, the gauge responded and it has worked correctly ever since.  I believe that when I sprayed silicon into the sender when I first disassembled it, I inadvertently sprayed what amounted to a film of dielectric to the contacts and it needed to wear thru, perhaps a splash of gasoline helped.  Anyhow, she's fixed.

[Stripe]

Wow, looking good...

[TripleJ]

Just an update, since making this repair Ive run into a couple issues.  When I initially reinstalled the fuel tank the gas gauge work perfectly.  Since then it has intermittently gone to overfull indicating an open circuit again.  Currently it's working perfectly, but I don't imagine Ive seen the last of this problem

I don't believe I left any opportunity for intermittent open circuit in the wiring that I did, but I don't know the integrity of the wiring from my repair all the way to the gauge itself.  I still might find a problem closer to the dash when I decide to look into it again.

Also I did test the sender when the tank was apart. I hooked an ohm meter to the sender and checked the resistance by sweeping the sender up-and-down.  I did notice that the meter was jumping around and showing open at times. To me this means the sender itself could be the problem. I'll keep an eye out for a replacement but since it works most of the time it's going to stay in there for now.

[legomybago]

I think you found your problem Hm?