Gas gauge or sender

[Standing Elk]

Am working on getting my gas gauge to work on my 49 B1B. Have juice to the sender in the takn under the seat, have juice to both sides of the gauge with the key on. I checked omes from each side of the gauge (with the key off) to ground and the needle pegged out. The gauge stays on empty no matter what. Am I doing this right and how do I tell if I have a bad sender or bad gauge of both? Thanks Steve

[Merle Coggins]

Your sender may not be grounding through it's mount in the tank, or your tank mounts may not be passing current through to the chassis due to rust and etc. Try grounding the sender body and see what happens.

Merle

[Desotodav]

I agree with you Merle. I had the same issue with my fuel gauge until I added an extra earth wire from one of the small mounting bolts on the top of the sender unit to the chassis. I was fortunate to know that both my sender and gauge were in working order before installing them though, so the problem was an easy fix.

Desotodav

[Standing Elk]

Thank fellas, I will do that. S.E.

[Dan Babb]

If that doesnt work, could be a bad float on your sender.

[geopcanuk]

You also might want to make sure that your fuel guage is grounded well.

[Byronb3b]

Steve, I just went through the same problem, gauge was reading empty all the time with just a slight flicker when turning on the ignition, I checked the the ground and made sure the juice was getting to the sending unit, next pulled the unit from the tank and with two jumper wires grounded the base and connected the sending unit to the gauge wire and moved the arm by hand gauge and sending unit were working fine, just no float left in the old cork, I believe due to the alcohol that is now added to our fuel dissolving the shellac coating on the cork, good luck. Byron

[bach4660]

not sure if the its the same for the '49 but on mine there is a connector block (three wires in, three wires out) on the driverside frame, it was disconnected here.

[Desotodav]

I was checking through some old posts earlier to see if others had encountered problems with fuel gauges/senders, and I came across this topic.

I dropped down to see an instrument repair friend earlier today only to find that my gauge worked perfectly. I drove home, dropped the gas tank out of the truck and removed the sender before travelling back (in another vehicle) to see my friend again. He checked that sender unit only to find that it was not faulty. I had a suspicion (after reading this topic and inspecting my cork float) that their was no float in my cork... and my suspicion was confirmed after chatting with my friend. It turned out that he had a spare plastic float from a 70's GM car on his shelf which was installed with ease. He bent the float arm so that it would read empty at about 11.6 inches and full at the total raised arm position.  I returned home and installed the gas tank again. The moment of truth was in turning the ignition key... and my fuel gauge worked again. If only all of my issues were so easily solved!