AndyK

These cars amaze me. There are 1950's Chevys out there with working gas gauges! What makes our car's parts fail so quickly? Not knowing how much gas you have in your car seems like a factory RECALL item to me!?

ERAU-944

i didn't have to mess with the sender at all. pulling the steering wheel won't be any fun for you, but you should be able to squeak the guages out behind it. there are only a few screws that hold the guage cluster into the dashboard. check the search function, i'm sure there's pictures of that on here somewhere. after you do that, take the connections off and clean them. chances are thats all you need to do, its all i needed to do, and it fixed my problem.

-Mike-

ERAU-944

its not a failure!! what dont you all understand?


our cars are substantially more complicated than a 1950's chebby. that said, it takes less to make something seem to malfunction or appear to break. just clean the wires and see if that doesnt fix it...

AndyK

Taking the guage cluster out wont set off the airbags or something, right? Do I have to disconnect the negative battery lead?

Unscrew cluster, remove (or push aside) to expose contacts, pull wires, clean, replace?

ERAU-944

no it doesnt set off the airbags.

you should disconnect the battery though, as with any operation like that

yeah just slide out the guages, take off the contacts, and clean em out. make sure they are clean and seated VERY WELL on the cluster, and that should take care of it. if its not that then go after the guage.

-Mike-

Rally Guy

Andy K - disconnect the battery and wait 20 MINTUES to let any residual charge drain from the airbag system - then remove the wheel. I've have had my wheel on and off a couple of times in the S2 recently and it's easy.

BUT - you'll need the "airbag light reset" precedure to get the "!" light and airbag light to extinguish afterwards. I've done this now several times too and it's easy.

I think the procedure is detailed on Clark's Garage.

RK

Porsche-O-Phile

I'd start with the sender unit - that's all it was on mine - easy 30-ish minute fix.

elf89

Skip from Paragon did a tech article on the fuel level sender with some photos and resistence charts.

fokker

Someone that have cleaned the fuel gauge on the instrument panel with success?
How did you do it?


Thanks
dave
951 -89

Chris_924s

That's great if both work!

Clean the terminals and lugs on the sending unit (400 grit paper and dielectric grease) and the ground lug between the spare tire and back panel.

It will work again. I just did it last week and am wondering why it took me so long to fix this PITA.

RSflared72e

Yes - reindexing the needle is the way to go. Most 944 fuel gauges read a little low. After you've reindexed it, the red low fuel warning lamp will actually come on at a useful point in the needle range...

fokker

Isnt that a way to hide frome the real problem?

The fuel sender grounds isnt located in the trunk on newer 944.
My -89 its some where below the instrument panel.

RSflared72e

I'm not convinced the needle setting at the VDO factory or wherever isn't itself the real problem. For example, in 1990, my 4 year old 951 with 36k miles had the same situation. An overzealous mechanic replaced the sender. Guess what: the needle remained in the same place. Perhaps Porsche set them this way to be conservative...

Since then, I have owned over 20 944 series cars. Most of them have had fuel gauges that read low, regardless of mileage. Your car may represent a totally different situation. Or, as I always say, YMMV - no pun intended.

Al

fokker

Okey!
Is it hard to get behind the fuel gauge cluster and pull on the needle?
You have to remove the wheel and some nuts? More?

Is it done in 10min?


Thanks
Dave

visualpascal

After reading this thread, I cleaned the contacts on the sending unit (after verifying correct resisitance) and cleaned the grounding bolt. Now, for the first time, it reads the correct level. ET=2-5 minutes.

--Chris