90 Q45 - fluctuating fuel gauge

[yawnraval1]

And I don't mean it fluctuates as the gas is used up......:-) what is happening is that the gauge fluctuates between "E" and slightly over a 1/4 tank. The guy I bought the car from had just recently installed a new fuel pump. the float assembly came off of the pump frame when he was reinstalling it in the tank. He swears the gauge was working before that pump failed. for all I can guess now the gauge may have never worked and instead of going to all of the trouble of trying to install the new pump into the tank with the float attached he just pulled it off and left it to hang by it's wire. If you have pulled one of these suckers out you know it ain't easy to do in the parking lot of the parts store. So I bought a assembly from PopPop and it benched fine (the float). The tank is 3/4 full of gas. The gauge, on start-up registered 1/4 tank, then dipped to "E" and then back to 1/8th of a tank. Then slightly over a 1/4 tank. weird.............. I would think the floats are calibrated to the tank already. the gauge is getting a signal but it reading all wrong. Has anyone experienced this before?

[elwesso]

I actually had to bend my float back up... You can see the potentiometer on the float, i had to adjust mine so the little connector would go all the way up.....

I messed my float up my first time, the gauge would only go to 3/4 of a tank... One thing I did is take the pump out and then hold the gauge up and see if the gauge on the dash goes up....

[yawnraval1]

great idea wes. Guess I should have thought of that myself. This engineering degree is just not paying off:-)

so obviously some calibration is in order. I will try that our sunday and let you know how it goes.

[DrewQ45]

I actually had to bend my float back up... You can see the potentiometer on the float, i had to adjust mine so the little connector would go all the way up.....

I messed my float up my first time, the gauge would only go to 3/4 of a tank... One thing I did is take the pump out and then hold the gauge up and see if the gauge on the dash goes up....

So this must be why my fuel never shows much over 3/4 tank? It just hit me that at nearly 200k and no buzzing or humming, along with the fuel gauge issue, my pump must have been changed at some point.