A couple of weeks ago I posted some questions asking for advice. I have gotten everything working now. One of the questions was regarding a fuel gauge. Someone suggested I post my fix whenever I ended up fixing the thing. Well I'll try to describe things as best as I can:

I discovered that the problem was the clear plastic ring through which the small bolt (onto which the wire lead is attached) exits the housing.

The plastic was eaten up and nearly gone. This was causing the bolt to ground out, showing a reading of empty.

Now the fun part. How to get a round piece of plastic that would be both durable and small enough to fit around the bolt. I did some rumaging and found a couple of plastic nipples from an old set of GM points. They were slightly bigger than the hole in the sending unit so I had to CAREFULLY drill out the hole so that it would be a little larger. I fed the nipples through the hole, one from each direction. I slid the bolt through those.

In the process I had to remove the bolt and had to cut the small wire inside the unit to accomplish this. After installing the plastic nipples and the bolt, I had to resolder the wire to the end of the bolt.

I then reattached everything and the gauge worked! It still leaked, however, which was the reason I removed it in the first place. So I removed the unit again, and reinstalled it with "Seal All", a gas resistant gasket maker I got at Home Depot. I put some sealer on both sides of the gasket. Still leaked.

So I decided it was leaking through the screw holes. I removed each screw in the base of the unit and applied "Seal All" to each hole and reattached the unit. Along with this I added a ground to one of the screws.

No leaks now and the gauge works. Whew!
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'66 1800S