I'm stunned that it eluded me for so long...

as some of you may recall i had the common problem of my fuel gauge going on the fritz while driving. but it would stick at "e" or "f". i had fixed it once before by cleaning the contacts but after a month or so it was back to the guessing game.

well i finally had enough and went to the salvage yard and grabbed one off an 87' a month ago. and today when teh weather finally warmed up i got busy and moved the bed over(i was alone so i lifted it and moved it back till i could get the pump out of the tank. thinking i was on running on fumes for the last week, i was surprised to find over a half a tank in there nut got right to work...lol

i tested the old float and it worked just fine, then test the new(ish) one and it worked fine to. after a half hour of testing(and slowly killing my battery) i did one final test and thats when i found the problem. the piece of plastic that the float moves to give the reading had worn around the metallic post and was wobbling causing the contacts to separate at the base of that little post giving me fallacious readings all the time.

what i did to remedy this is pop the float arm(and the pastic piece that holds it on) and bend the tabs out and put it back on. i made sure they kept contact while moving the float up and down and back and forth to make sure it didn't lose contact. sure enough it worked like brand new.

of course i broke both those little clips holding the fuel lines on but i zip tied them back on(as i had done previously) because the auto store had closed early(due to it being sunday).

i'm hoping this will be a permanent fix, but will be keeping close watch on it in the next 6weeks.

p.s. i will have pics of the float(or maybe a video) and the fix tomorrow.

 

Cool! Easy fix.

 

Nice fix on the gauge. You did good getting the pump out by yourself!

 

thanks. here's the pics. I apologize for the huge photos and some of the blurry ones.

notice the gap.


now the lack of gap.


it was pivoting on this rod.


causing this tab to lose contact.


so i bent the tabs(all 3 of them) outward to fill in the slop from the wobbling float.


tested it multiple times and it kept a solid reading everytime.

the only difference now is that the float from the 87(which is in the tank now) has a straight float where as the one that came out has a bent float.