The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay Fuel gauge & sender?

Ok,
Both of mine work, but what I'm looking at is, my gauge is 6 volt,with a reducer from 12.
When I fill up the gauge stays on full until the level is almost down to half tank, before the needle moves. Then it will bounce around between 1/4 and 3/4 until fuel is at half tank, then it stabilizes to 1/2.
Is this because of the reducer, or maybe I have a larger OHMS sending unit?
This is not a pressing issue, because I can still drive, and not run out of fuel.

Hey PapaaJ,
I ran mine like yours until last week. I think it finally cooked the gauge because it quit suddenly and went to empty. I was running several miles from nowhere with a fully loaded truck and trailer (probably about three tons) and no clue how much gas I had.

SCAREY!

I had an old NOS International gas gauge in a box, so I gutted an old Sunpro volt gauge and created my new fuel gauge to mount under the dash. Now I know how much gas I have and it is much less stress when I'm out in the boondocks.

This is merely a thought PapaJ. Is your sending unit in the tank correctly?...or can it only go in one way??
Its just a thought as I just put my sending unit down in my new tank. At first I thought the holes was not going to match up until I kept turning it hole to hole and found out that the unit would go in only one way. The way it went in the float was at a right angle (cross ways) of the way the gas would normally slosh around when starting and stopping. I can see the logic where it would be more stable going crossways.
So, that said, could/can your sending unit go in and fit the holes anyway you want to...if so, you may need to "index" it around a notch or two.

Whether its a problem or not did any of this make sense????

I'd guess you have a bad sender, especially if it's an old original the wire wound resistor is corroded .... take it out and operate it by hand to see how smoothly [or not] it moves the gauge

Bill

(Achipmunk) Unit can only go in one way.
(squeeze)When I checked it sometime ago it worked smoothly and I had this problem back then.
(FGT) I'll probably get a gauge to go under the dash that's 12 volt and deal with it.

My homemade gauge worked for two days. I'm in the same boat as you are.

Does anybody know what the ohm range is for a 73 suburban sending unit? The Sunpro gauges I found says 240 ohms empty and 33 ohms full. The suburban replacement sending units say "Rheostat range (0-95 ohms)" I guess I'm not sure what all that means.

later GM truck gauges use 90 ohm gauges and senders, which have a range of about 0-90 - the Sunpro would have a range of about 33-240, can't mix n match, with aftermarket gauges you need the appropriate aftermarket sender

Bill

Do you know of any aftermarket gauges that will match up to the OEM 73 Suburban sending unit. I'm looking at a whole bunch of truck in the way of changing out the sending unit.

hafta check around the stores or the net to see what uses a 90 ohm sender, the 90 ohm "universal" senders are commonly available, so there'll be gauges intended for GM vehicles

Bill

Thanks Bill,
Now I have hijacked PapaJ s thread and got my problem solved.
Looks like the Equus 8362 available at Checker O'Reilly is the one for me.

NAW don't worry about it,I learned something to.

MeTOO!