I have a 1988 Dakota with a gas gauge that really pisses me off. I'll take a ride one town over and back and the gas gauge barley moved then I get in it later and after a 2 min trip to the store it drops an entire "bar" so it must take a reading every so many minutes or something?? I want a more accurate gas reading, my gauge does not drop if I'm going uphill for an extended period of time with a small amount of gas in the tank so it must not be continuously sampling? I know that it IS sampling though obviously. Any thoughts?

 

My guess is the float needs to be adjusted. Sounds like the float is slightly sticking.

 

Great... I just had that tank out and last time I did it I couldn't smoke a cigarette for like the whole afternoon; I drank a lot of gas lol. The float was on the bottom on the tank and I had to put it back on but the crush washer was missing so I bent the tip of the rod it sits on up since it had a lot of side to side play anyway.

 

Idk, my acclaim used to be that way. Drive it 100 miles, needle wouldn't move. Park it and restart it later and it would just drop.

 

I have a 95 and I know mine is continuous.because the infant I take off and brake I can watch it bounce around

 

Yeah see mine won't do that and I'm not sure if it's a computer related sampling issue or not.

 

The only guages that are controlled by or related to the computer are the tach and the speedometer although since yours is an 88 i believe your speedometer is cable driven. all other guages are directly wired and have nothing to do with the computer on these 1st gen dakotas. Even the coolant temp guage has a separate sensor from the computer. Sorry for all that extra unecessary stuff lol. but my point is there is no sampling rate on these it is continuous all the time.

 

That's what mine did somewhat. I took the pump out and the fuel pump sending unit was toast ill find the link to my post.

 

https://dodgeforum.com/forum/1st-gen...e-bed-off.html

 

Very good stuff to know!!! I'll be dropping in a 318 Magnum so this is stuff I needed to know anyway. The gauge cluster is something I wanted to swap over but that answers my question (the plugs probably will not fit). Even though I would have lost a seat belt light and gained a useless tach I would have the newer gauge cluster before my engine upgrade running on the old wiring harness (won't work?).

I probably have some bad contacts on the potentiometer now you mention it did look a bit rough when I saw it a few months ago.