Technical fuel gauge sender RE: im a jammy bugger

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Technical fuel gauge sender RE: im a jammy bugger

Joined
Mar 5, 2013
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404
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France, Autun
well, the old girl caught me out again!
this time it was in front of my house, sat waiting for the Mrs with the engine running, she cut out little by little. i had run out of fuel again, even though the needle said i had well over half a tank. so the needle moves up alright, but doesnt seem to want to move down. We were running a little tight on time this morning and we decided to take the Mrs car to town, and so this afternoon, i went to work on the problem, i disconnected the sender wires from beneath the flap in the boot, and tried the ignition, the needle didn't move, and the red light came on, so, its not the recently fitted new console playing up. Out came the assembly holding the fuel gauge sender from the tank. i played around for a while, and when i got to the point of dismantling the cylindrical sender unit, i popped the top off, and tuned it upside down to pull the parts out, a slosh of diesel greeted me!
now, i know i should have taken pictures of all of this, but when you're up to the wrists in diesel oil, you dont want to be fiddling with your mobile phone, getting it all dirty etc.
So, in the case that this might help someone else down the line, i'll discribe as best i can, the sealed cylinder houses a float between two springs, as the float moves up and down, the stationary contacts at the top, move against a resistor located at the top of the float. On the bottom, there is a small grub screw helping hold in place a piece of plastic for the bottom spring, and an entry/exit filter for the fuel to come and go. On mine, the filter was somehow blocked, and i couldn't see how to remove or clean it, so i went for removing the grub screw option, perhaps not the best solution, but with daylight fading and no garage, it was a compromise, and after a test drive and a refuel at the 24/7 pump, it seems, so far to have worked fine, with no adverse consequences as the spring sits nicely in a groove at the bottom on its own anyway.
i shall be watching the gauge with great interest this week on my way to and from work.
HTH
allan
 
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