Hello.

Just got my 82 928 back from the shop for some major transmission work. Discovered that the fuel level guage does not work now, and it was working fine before this transmission work. I do not believe it is a problem with the fuel sender, because I disconnected its connector, and jumpered across the connector's sockets and got no response at the instrument cluster....with the level needle or the empty light.

It could be the instrument guage, of course. But, I thought it a little strange that neither the empty light nor the needle responds when I jumper the sender connector. So...I was wondering if anyone out there knows of of a connector somewhere between the sender and the instruments that I should check. The wires from the sender's connector seem to disappear into a harness, so I could not trace them.

(Another reason I am wonderning if something is simply disconnected is because after picking the car up from the shop, the speedometer/odometer was not working either. And sure enough, the shop had failed to reconnect the famous speed sender connector in the spare wheel well. So.....I am wondering if there is another connector relating to the fuel guage that might have come undone due to the work, which I cannot find.)

Thanks!

 

Or....if anyone knows where each of the three wires from the fuel sender terminate at the instrument cluster or fuse/relay panel, that would be great, too. Then I can test for electrical discontinuity.

Thanks!

 

check the fuses first,
Then check the plug for a ground,
if the trans was removed then the wires in the spare tire well have been moved SO
then the spare tire well , under the black cover make sure the ground wires are attached,
and or check behind the RR quarter panel liner for the ground connections

 

With the ignition on, if you ground the black wire the guage should move to full if the guage moves then something is bad in the sender or there is no ground ... brown is ground. The third wire is for the low fuel warning light. yellow/black on my car. If your guage works and the ground is good then there are two very fine wires inside the sender that the float slides on they have prolly broke. I have had good luck with resoldering them at the ends, if they break in the middle then its time for a replacement. good luck

 

Same sort of thing happened to me.

I would take the car back to the shop and have them look over their work and find the wire(s) or connectors they knocked loose when they worked on the car.

You didn't pay them to make your car worse...

 

Thanks for the tips. Unfortunately, my daughter drove off with the car this morning, and was out all day. (Well....that is why I paid $$$ to have its tranny fixed. So it is good that she could use it again.) So....no more troubleshooting till probably Tuesday night.

Joe: yeah, that is what I should do. Except it was at the shop for four weeks, and we really need it back for the last month of summer while my daughter is still home from college. So best option all things considered is to live with it and then fix it myself. Also....I'm really not certain on this one that it was something they did or didn't do right. Might be completely unrelated.

OK, more later. Thanks

 

Success! Checked fuses first. All were good. When checking if the one terminal on the sender connector was properly connected to ground, got strange results. After piddling around, finally discovered that the ground wire was broken inside the plastic connector body. So....easy to fix. Guage works great again, including the empty warning light.

So I don't know if this fuel sender connector was something that the shop messed with when replacing the transmission or not. (Do you have to pull out the gas tank to replace transmission?) If not, it seems a little strange that the wire broke, since it was working great. But....I am happy now.

Doing all the research for this problem has made me think I might want to replace the two main ground straps (engine and battery-to-body). They test OK, and everything on the car is working now...but they just don't look good. So....I'll be considering cost effective parts alternatives.

Thanks for the help!

 

glad you got things sorted out, Keep Em Flying!