hawkman

Hi. i have been having some issues with my fuel gauge. it stopped working about a year and a half ago. so now i can never tell how much gas i have in the tank. or so i thought. about a week ago, my alternator finally gave out. after 145,000 miles of use. i thought that i had a bad battery before, it was about 3 or 4 years old. so it needed replacing anyway. but after buying the new battery, i thought my problems were solved. up until that week ago. I found a local shop and was able have to guy "rebuild" the alternator. now everything runs great again. i even have the fuel gauge working again. although i am a bit skeptical at fully trusting it.

could the faulty fuel gauge have been a result of the alternator slowly going out? (i should mention, that at any given time, the gauge would work off an on. sometimes after not working for say a month straight, it would suddenly work for 1 day.) i had all my other dash lights and gauges working fine. i am not sure what to make of it. i have not heard of this. has anyone else heard of this type of thing?
from searching online, i can take the bed of the truck up and inspect the wiring to the tank. other than that, i cant afford a new sending unit.

kendallt

Possibly it's the lead where it gets power from under the hood. Changing the alternator could have moved the wiring around enough to straighten it out. I've had a few things get fixed by seemingly unrelated repairs, I rebuild the alternator on my old motorcycle, and my turn signals started working again, before that they'd come on then go off.

Not related, but my old ranger had a similar problem, every now and then the dash lights would dim, gauges would stop working and it would start running rough.
Strangely, there were three things that would fix it, one was to pull over, open the hood, take the cluster of wires that ran up over the engine, pick it up about 2 inches and drop it back down. Or, if I was on the freeway, I could fix it by moving over far enough to hit the chatter strips. If I was in a hurry, third was to hit the clutch, shut the key of and back on then let out the clutch.
Whichever way I did it, the truck would run perfectly, sometimes for only a day, but mostly for a month or two.
I never did figure it out, even after tearing out the whole harness and checking it out with meters and test lights.
It was a great truck, and the problem wasn't enough to make me get rid of it. I just considered it a puzzle.

Ken.

octaneman

Hi hawkman.

Check the ground wire from the harness and see if it's loose or corroded and repair as needed. Remove the sending unit, do a continuity test using a DVOM from the wire that connects the float to the sending unit's connector on top by wiggling the wire(s). Make sure there's a solid contact between the pin(s) and there are no intermittent jumps on the meter. When moving the float up and down, set the meter on the resistor scale note any dead spots on the float resistor. When you reinstall the unit, make sure the O-ring sits properly on the tank so it makes a tight seal and the locking ring is the proper lock position.

Note: Warning ! Keep the tank away from any sources of heat or static electricity, gas fumes can ignite instantly !!

Always keep in mind safety first when working with gasoline. When the sending unit is removed, cover the gas tank hole with a rag so nothing gets in.


post back your findings.