Good suggestion


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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [108.162.246.23] on Sunday, May 22, 2016 at 12:41:44 :

In Reply to: Re: Going Crazy OT gas gauge help. Packard. posted by Doc Dave [173.245.54.55] on Sunday, May 22, 2016 at 12:11:00 :

Found that problem many times and always fixed it by making a small coil of flexible wire (so it bends easily and doesn't affect the movement of the arm) and soldering it from the float arm to the base of the sender. My '65 came with two extra senders in the tool box in back, probably because somebody had been chasing that same problem.

The wiper arm that rubs across the resistance wire coil is attached to the float arm, and the one way it goes to ground is through the pivot. This was probably fine when everything was clean and new, but over time it gets oxidized and makes a bad connection. Intermittent bad connections are the worst to troubleshoot because likely as not they start working (for a while) when you monkey with them. Every time I've had a gas gauge jump around or only read at the extremes, this was the problem. Bear in mind the sender has to be grounded to the tank and the tank has to be grounded to the frame. Tank mounting straps usually have insulation behind them (cloth or rubber) so the straps don't wear through the tank. Originally, the steel fuel line would have served as an alternate ground path, but if some part of it has been replaced with rubber hose, that won't work any more. You can check this by connecting a ground wire from the sender directly to a bare spot on the frame, or even back to the ground terminal of the battery, and see if that fixes the problem. The key to electrical troubleshooting is "divide and conquer". If you find you have a ground issue between sender and frame, you can then try grounding just the tank, and so on. If you don't follow a systematic procedure, you can waste a lot of time replacing parts and cleaning up connections that were perfectly good, and still not finding the real problem.



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