Fuel Lever Sender Advice
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Fuel Lever Sender Advice
Just thought I'd post this. Don't know if anybody has posted the same thing before, but after spending all day yesterday working on my truck when all I wanted to do was check the fuel sender with a multimeter and check the gauge, I figured it needed to be shared. 
Anyway, I unbolted the bed and propped it up, and then pulled off the connector, guard ring, and pressure washed everything around it. Then, I checked the guage. It was reading full when the connector was just unplugged (effectively infinite resistance between the resistor pin and ground), and empty when the resistor pin was shorted to ground with a jumper wire (effectively 0 resistance). So, the gauge worked.
I pulled the fuel sender/pump out of the tank, hooked the multimeter up to the resistor and body, and checked the resistance with the float down and then up. It was perfectly within specs... ~15 ohms to ~160 ohms.
So, naturally, I was confused. However, I decided to pull the float off and see if it actually floated. Good choice, because it was full of gas.
The old floats are made of sheet metal soldered together, and this one had a small crack towards the edge (it was cylinder shaped), which allowed it to fill up with gas. I tried to solder the thing back together, but wound up burning a larger hole in the float (it is very thin sheet metal).
I wound up having to buy another fuel sender because nobody sold just floats. Just some advice for the next person, you can attempt to patch the crack/hole with some JB-Weld or similar, just give it 24 hours to cure. The new floats on the replacement units are a closed-cell foam, so I don't think I'll have to worry about this same problem for quite some time.
P.S. - I also kinked the filler hose slightly when laying the bed back down, so it takes me ~10 minutes to pump $15 worth of gas. Just another warning... gotta fix that sometime this week.
Other than that, the little Ranger is turning out pretty good. I might post some pictures in a couple more weeks when I get the cosmetic stuff done (nothing excessive, just some touch-up paint and bondo, and removing the old pin-striping, plus some moderate window tint ((A/C is old and needs all the help it can get)), and possibly a bed liner).
Anyway, I unbolted the bed and propped it up, and then pulled off the connector, guard ring, and pressure washed everything around it. Then, I checked the guage. It was reading full when the connector was just unplugged (effectively infinite resistance between the resistor pin and ground), and empty when the resistor pin was shorted to ground with a jumper wire (effectively 0 resistance). So, the gauge worked.
I pulled the fuel sender/pump out of the tank, hooked the multimeter up to the resistor and body, and checked the resistance with the float down and then up. It was perfectly within specs... ~15 ohms to ~160 ohms.
So, naturally, I was confused. However, I decided to pull the float off and see if it actually floated. Good choice, because it was full of gas.
The old floats are made of sheet metal soldered together, and this one had a small crack towards the edge (it was cylinder shaped), which allowed it to fill up with gas. I tried to solder the thing back together, but wound up burning a larger hole in the float (it is very thin sheet metal).
I wound up having to buy another fuel sender because nobody sold just floats. Just some advice for the next person, you can attempt to patch the crack/hole with some JB-Weld or similar, just give it 24 hours to cure. The new floats on the replacement units are a closed-cell foam, so I don't think I'll have to worry about this same problem for quite some time.
P.S. - I also kinked the filler hose slightly when laying the bed back down, so it takes me ~10 minutes to pump $15 worth of gas. Just another warning... gotta fix that sometime this week.
Other than that, the little Ranger is turning out pretty good. I might post some pictures in a couple more weeks when I get the cosmetic stuff done (nothing excessive, just some touch-up paint and bondo, and removing the old pin-striping, plus some moderate window tint ((A/C is old and needs all the help it can get)), and possibly a bed liner).
