Greg,
Your experience was the ticket. After bending the sending unit some, the fuel gauge system is working!
So I took the sending unit out of the tank & tested it again by putting a ground to the negative terminal on the battery and simply moved the float arm with the unit laying on the seat. The fuel gauge went up & down just it should. When I put the sending unit back in the tank and put a couple screws in, the frame of the sending unit and the terminal of the sending unit had continuity. Same old story. Sooo with nothing to lose I took the unit out of the tank and physically bent it. I bent the conductor that runs from the rheostat to the sending unit terminal so that there was no way it could touch the vertical arm that holds the rheostat/float. Then I bent the float arm so that, when installed, it would be away from the side of the tank. When I installed the bent sending unit......Bingo! it works.
