My husband is on the road home from Ohio to Texas with horses in tow. The fuel gauge stopped working a few hours ago in Kentucky. Its pegged past full for both the front and rear tanks and it will blip when selecting between front and rear but wont change. Luckily the truck has an auxiliary fuel tank so he can make sure it stays fairly full but the shut-off doesn't work so it can overfill the tank if he can't read the gauge. He checked fuses and they're fine.
What can he do or check? Like I said he's far from home and has horses with him and limited on tools, so stopping for extended periods is not easily done (the horses wont re-load without help) and he doesn't have a lot he can do. Any suggestions?

 

Stop and fill up often. No use messing with it that far from home if it still drives IMHO. Once he gets it home then dig into it.

 

agreed. stop every 150 miles or so and top off. once he knows how much he is burning, he can adjust the stops to get more miles before stopping

 

Okay, maybe I should have been more specific.
The auxiliary fuel tank has 100 gallons in it, doesn't have a gauge, pumps directly into the front tank, and fills via a toggle switch inside the truck, so we have no idea how much that tank is pumping in without the gauge for the regular tanks working. That, along with the almost 40 gal in the front and rear tanks, there is no reason for him to stop for fuel, nor can we afford to dump more in it after putting in that 140 gallons. Add that to the 30ft trailer on a desolate stretch of road with very few truck stops and its not much of an option anyway.
Now, as an update: I know I read somewhere when I was searching for info on this problem about it possibly being a short somewhere causing the gauge to read full. This seems likely since last night when he hit some rough road, the gauge moved and tried to start working again but he lost it again later down the road. Does anyone have any suggestions of where may be a good place to look first before he starts chasing wires all over the place when he stops for lunch? Or could it be caused be something else?

 

Kinda late in the day for me to reply, but I think the wiring for the tanks are all on the drivers side inboard on the frame. They come down from the engine compartment in a plastic conduit all the way back.I had a problem similar to your husbands.The spots that would be hard to see would be on top of the tanks and under the dash.

 

Thanks, I think he ended up figuring it out, at least enough to get home. It was currently working when I spoke to him after lunch. It did seem to be loose wiring so he tightened down what he could get to. I appreciate your trying to help, even with it being late Its also good info if it gives him any trouble tomorrow.

 

Glad to hear that he made it home OK. I used to drive a truck back in the day,so I have a pretty good idea what he went thru.Sometimes God grants us just enough to make it thru.