Ok. I put dye in the oil a week ago trying to track it down. I looked tonight and no dye anywhere but oil dripping off the starter and torque converter plate. Is it possible the transmission dipstick tube is cracked and coming out of that up by the starter? Does the trans oil move up the dipstick like that?

 

I've had two floats fail on perfectly good sending units.

 

Its possible you have a wiring issue on the gauge .

 

^^^ If it works on one tank and not the other, it would be extremely hard to imagine how it could be the gauge.

 

OK , wiring issue "to" the gauge .

Better ?

In the last 20 years or more I have only seen 2 fuel sending units physically fail . One was from a rear end accident that the rheostat was damaged . The other had the float fall off due to the clip holding it in place rusting off . But I have seen 20 or more with a bad ground .

We are long past saturated floats , especially running in diesel fuel . IIRC , fords default to empty with no ground . I've been wrong before & I am sure someone will be sure to point it out if I am wrong again .

 

If it's wiring, it's wiring between the sending unit and the selector valve, since it's at the selector valve that the gauge switching happens. And if the circuit were open, it would read way past full.

The floats are brass. They don't become "saturated" like a plastic float; rather, they leak. They need only the tiniest hole to become sodden with fuel. The two I've had fail, I could hear the fuel sloshing within them, but for the life of me couldn't find an actual hole, and couldn't find a way to orient it so that the fuel inside would come out. That tells me that a VERY small hole will cause the float to fill up. I'm guessing that the seam between the two halves of the float separated just ever so slightly.

 

I've been wrong before & I am sure to be wrong again wrong again .

 

When he finds the problem, we'll know who is right and wrong. Both are good possibilities in my book. Since its reading dead empty I'd start with checking wiring, but it wouldn't be too surprising if the problem is the float.

 

I looked into this today and was surprised to see the float is brass .I havent seen that for a while . Mad p could very well be right about it being full of fuel . We will never know if it was a gradual failure . My apologies .

 

here's my front end....gonna go through it to see if anything is loose tomorrow and try and nail down the fuel gauge....


if everything is good.....what should I be upgrading? steering box (red head), crossover steering? or just heavy duty tie rods?

 

The play in mine was track bar bushings & the intermediate shaft on the steering column . What ever it is it will be easy to see .

 

Ok. Found the leak. It is that plug behind the head. UPDATE---that explains the leak running down to the starter, but I cleaned the valley out, and after a 30 min ride, there was a little pool of oil...the copper line that runs off that rail end plug was dry underneath (if the oil was running down it into the valley)....do the copper lines and the piece where they join in the valley have orings? or what do they use to seal? do they make a complete oring kit to replace them all at once?

The loose steering was the ballpoint at the pitman arm....although I still should get heavy duty tie rods

Haven't figured out the fuel gauge yet....