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Thread: Fuel gauge.

  1. #11
    Super Moderator LarrBeard's Avatar
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    @@#%%!! Gauges

    Quote Originally Posted by okiemark View Post
    Well, first of all I can eliminate rust. Everything is brand new. Body, wiring, gauges, everything. It has a 12 volt alternator with internal regulator. I have a ground cable that goes from engine to frame. I also have a ground that goes from the back of the speedometer cluster to the body. Everywhere I check I get a good ground. I will look to see if I can find that "sardine can" in the old dash. The diagram shows a "12 volt" wire directly from the battery to the back of the fuel gauge and that jumps over to the temp gauge. This thing does read about 14 volts when it is running, maybe that is an issue.
    Here is a sketch of some things I found this morning.

    If you can't read it, drop me a PM with your email address and I can attach a much better picture than I can post here.

    14 volts is great - a sign of a healthy system charging the battery.

    In my diagram, there is a 12 volt wire to the fuel gauge, but a separate wire jumpered over to the Temp gauge (6-volts or so to Temp) - the so-called third terminal.

    None of us had considered a pinched wire to the fuel sender yet. I have punched wires with metal screws, clamped them between metal edges and made just about every uh-oh in the book.
    Attached Images Attached Images

  2. #12
    Senior Member 5JeepsAz's Avatar
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    It's the float inside the tank. It's either gradually less floaty, or sticking. You owe me a Cherry Coke next time for the consulting fee. This is true because I don't understand any of the above explanations, so I dumbed it down to a mechanical problem. Lol. Good luck, and yes, mine does same thing!

  3. #13
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    Everything is new. New tank. New sender. New wires. I checked to make sure the sender was grounded and that the tank was grounded. BUT! Here is something I did find. I went back and looked at the old dash panel and what did I find attached to the back of the speedometer? A little box that looks sorta like a relay. Two terminals. One wire went to the fuel gauge and jumped over to the temp gauge. When I get time I am going to get that little bugger off of there and hook a jumper from the battery to one terminal and check the voltage at the other side. This has to be the current regulator they are talking about, but so far I can't find one you can buy. You can tell this is originally factory wired in, but the wiring diagram in the owner's manual shows it but not in detail.
    Last edited by okiemark; 07-07-2020 at 11:21 PM.

  4. #14
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    Yep, that diagram represents just the way the box was wired in on the back of the old speedometer. Would it be too much to ask for that old relic to work?

  5. #15
    Super Moderator gmwillys's Avatar
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    You'd be surprised to find out it works flawlessly. I have voltage regulators for 6 volts that looked like they were eaten then crapped off a cliff, but they still work just fine.

  6. #16
    Super Moderator bmorgil's Avatar
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    If it does not work it's not a big deal. 12volt to 6volt inverters are cheap nowadays. A solid state one would work real well.

    https://www.amazon.com/12-volt-6-dc-...t+dc+converter

  7. #17
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    It actually looks pretty good. Under the dash has kept it protected.

  8. #18
    Super Moderator LarrBeard's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by okiemark View Post
    Yep, that diagram represents just the way the box was wired in on the back of the old speedometer. Would it be too much to ask for that old relic to work?
    Well, we finally did get something right!

    Your new cluster appears to have the three terminal fuel gauge (right?). If it does, that takes the voltage regulator out of the picture unless we are really chasing a strange failure. The new gauge has its own regulator built into it.

    If you want to just look at the old regulator for kicks, 12-volts to the input, ground the can and look at the voltage on the output. If you have a little digital meter, the display might jump all over the place because you are seeing a set of contacts opening and closing. An old analog meter might bounce around.

    In one of your posts you said:

    "The diagram shows a "12 volt" wire directly from the battery to the back of the fuel gauge and that jumps over to the temp gauge."

    If you look at the printed diagram I sent, notice that the wire from the ignition loops around that jumper to the temp gauge, it isn't connected to the temp gauge directly - just through the jumper.

    Make sure that you have it connected per the printed OMIX diagram.

    Here is a suggestion:

    Like most intermittent problems, you can't fix it when it's not broken. Get a piece of wire that you can connect to the fuel sender terminal of the gauge and bring it out to where you can get to it and measure the voltage from the fuel sender terminal to ground. Depending on how much gas in in the tank, it should run from about 1 volt to about 6. When the gauge goes full scale, I'll bet that voltage drops to almost zero - a short somewhere between the sender terminal on the gauge and the sender terminal on the tank. With installing a new harness, that's more likely than a bad gauge.

  9. #19
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    Well, I asked a question about the regulator to KW and he wrote back and said the regulator is internal to the gauge cluster, so I am trying to find out if all I need is a new fuel gauge.

  10. #20
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    I'll check that out. Also I used some of that flex tubing that you put around wires all the way from the gauge to the sender, but I will check for a possible short.

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