The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay gas guage grounding issue

my gas guage will not show a full tank and i've pinpointed the problem to a bad ground at the guage bracket. if the guage is mounted in the bracket the needle shows less than a full tank. if i take it out of the bracket and ground the back of the guage with a jumper wire it will show the full tank (sender is out of the tank, so i know the needle should show full). i've sanded the inside of the bracket and back of the guage but still the ground connection doesn't seem to be good. so my question is whether anyone sees a problem with me soldering a piece of insulated wire to the back side (on that little grounding plate)of the guage and then running that to a good ground under the dash. i'm working on a 1950 3100, 12v with a new 12v guage and sender. thank you.

i am glad that no one replied to my grounding issue, because i finally determined that the ground wasn't the problem. it turns out that the needle on the new gas guage sticks out farther from the face of the guage than the original and therefore it is hitting the underside of the metal face plate that covers all of the guages. so the needle is stuck. once i remove the faceplate the needle moves. has anyone else had this problem with the new gas guages. i'm wondering if the only fix is to grind down the back side of the faceplate--i hate to do such a mod unless there's no other way. the needle can't just be bent from what i can tell. thanks for any advice.

that's very helpful. did you have any trouble getting the bezel and faceplate to attach to the casing which holds the guages; since your spacer pushes the face plate away from the casing, i would think it would be difficult to get the bezel to attach because the flange that bends over the casing is very narrow. thank you.

When I had it installed in the dash I just had everything held by the 4 nuts in the back. I didn’t bend the tab over. To install it I just held the pieces with some tape, started the 4 nuts then pulled the tape back. It was not fun but worked.

I had that cluster installed but was not able to get it working, so I removed it to troubleshoot.

It turns out because I had painted the inside of the gauge housing I lost my ground.

Once I removed the paint it tested fine.

Unfortunately I have yet to get that thing in the truck. Been using a temporary under dash gauge