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Just a little back ground, gas guage has never worked well in the 10 years that I have owned this car. Under warranty, dealer allegedly replaced the sending unit, and the guage over the course of the first 50,000 miles. Over the years had temporary improvement cleaning the connector and tightening the plug pins at the back of the cluster. A week or two at best and then the needle would show a only fuller tank but never a full tank. The low fuel light has always been reliable though.
Had the cluster out to do some light bulb replacements last weekend and removed the gas guage unit from the inside of the cluster and cleaned the contact points to the circuit board. Did not help, though after cleaning the guage did register a little more fuel in the tank but again just for a few days.
Last night I tore into the sending unit, pulled the whole pre pump stalk from the tank. Figuring I have nothing to loose, cut the wires to sender and removed it from the stalk.
Pulling it apart, it was apparent that the problem is in the sender. And doubt very much that this was a replacement unit from the warranty work, from even ten years ago. There is a thin shiny stainless steel metal conductor that resides on the float this makes contact to the wound wire (rheostat), the metal contact had a film or sludge that was grey, almost like a powdered metal that was very difficult wipe away. Also after almost 300k miles the points of contact had worn a groove into both contact edges.
The sludge could be just an old lubricant that may have been used at the assembly plant, I don't know, some sort of electrolisis, the metal from the wearing or build up of additives. Whatever, bending the conductor so the contact point was at a slightly different area may have done the trick. Reassembled the unit, soldered the wires, a little shrink tubing and after an hour of struggle with the gasket on the tank, the guage works flawlessly. Now for the first time in 10 years, the guage shows a full tank, which is accurate of what is in the tank, that was something that has never happened, not only did the guage show full the whole time on my ride into the office this morning, the guage was consistant.
I'll keep you all posted on this, but I am definitely on to something here.
My next post will be about an erratic tach and what worked for me.
DanR 94 964 289,000 miles (55,000 on the new engine)
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DanR
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