sharknoob

Yes the low fuel warning light and the " ! " will both come on..... looks like you found it

jwarner6

Awesome idea! Wish I'd thought of that. That confirmed it! Went and bought some gas and now it's off for good or at least until I run out of gas again. Absolutely awesome! Something stupid strikes again. If I just had a dad gum owner's manual I'd have figured this out earlier!

Now it looks like my fuel level sender unit is not working. The ground is good and the signal to the gauge is good. If I short the signal wire to ground or to the ground wire the gauge immediately jumps to full. But I've got at least 3 1/2 to 4 gallons in the tank now and the gauge barely moves off the bottom even though the low fuel indicator is now not making contact. I should think I'd be at least showing something above the low fuel area on the gauge.

So, now to do some research into how repairable these sender units are. Hopefully just a bit of cleaning.

It's a good day in Ninetweentyeightville!

Thanks to everyone!

SharkSkin

Don't be so sure there is a problem. IIRC it holds about 2-1/2 gallons at the point where the light comes on, and the needle movement per gallon is very little at the low end. If you want to do a quick check, pull the sender out and invert it, then plug it back in. If the gauge reads full when you do that, put it back in and leave well enough alone. You might want to replace the gasket for the sender if it looks aged. Otherwise I'd say just fill it up and see what happens.

R.Pires

Hi,
I wouldn't worry much about that, just get used to it!
Mine as always been like that, you fill the tank and it never shows completely full, it stays there for a long time then starts to come down and when the light shows it as been bellow the red mark also for a long time.
Maybe it's the sender, maybe it's the gauge....
I know that when the light comes on I have about 6 liters left, so it will be enough to get me to the petrol station! Hopefully....

Regards

Ricardo Pires
83S Euro 5spd

jwarner6

Very interesting. I guess I'll go ahead and pull it out and experiment with it. Thanks.

Mrmerlin

to install the sender nut soak it in hot water for a few minutes, ( this lets it expand so it can be tightened and to make a better seal when it cools)

jwarner6

Wow! Any thoughts on removing it? I haven't tried yet but past experience with these things tells me it might be difficult and being plastic instead of metal I can't go banging away at it with a drift.

jwarner6

Okay, sender unit removed, inspected, repaired and returned with excellent results!

With it out of the tank and hooked up, it would register only 3/4 tank when the float was at the top.

Took it apart and examined it. Found that the resistance was greater when connecting the voltmeter to the external plug connectors versus their opposite number on the inside of the top of the sender. I was getting about 250 ohms in the empty position and 120 in the full position from outside the sender and about 120 and 50 respectively from the inside. Another posting on this forum noted numbers or 70.5 and 5 so interestingly I wasn't even close to those numbers. The problem is resistance in the top of the sender where the connector pins are connected through with what look like rivets. Those connections were corroded. The only way to properly repair them would have been to destroy the rivets and I'm guessing the pins too. So, much like with the pod repair instructions found on this site, I took the Dremel and cleaned up the bottom of the rivets, rivet washers and sender wire copper connectors. Then I soldered the three together for each pin. End result was consistant resistance readings inside and outside and with the sender reassembled and connected up I now get an exactly full tank with the float at the top! With the sender back in the tank I now register 1/4 tank instead of completely empty which appears to be right on the money! WOOOO HOOOO! Happy Day!