Broken Fuel Gauges

[RSummers]

I buy and sell diesel trucks and have noticed that a number

of my Dodge trucks have inoperative fuel gauges. The shop

I use has told me that it costs in the area of $600 to fix this

problem. Is this true or is there a fix it I can do to resolve this

recurring problem ? Also is this normal or am I having a bad

run of luck ? Note that these vehicles are from 95-98 thus far.

 

[R.ebel]

Fuel gauges

This is a fairly common problem on these trucks. The gauge itself is fine but the sender in the tank goes bad. It's not to bad to fix, to access the sender you have to drop the fuel tank or tilt the bed to get to the sender. I've done it both ways and prefer the bed tilting method, remove the 4 forward bolts that secure the bed to the frame and losen but do not remove the rear 2 bolts and jack up front of the bed. Your shop sounds awfully high for this repair A new sender from Dodge is about $45. 00



Welcome to the TDR!



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[azgearpro]

the fix

check fritzes page he has a permament fix for this, mine has the same problem, I have to go by how many miles on my trip. I hope this helps

 

[xxxHollywood]

I had this same problem. The most annoying thing was the chiming! The dealership fixed it for $220. 00 and I had my truck back by lunch.

 

[CJ Johansson]

Permanent fix

Yup, the permanent fix on fritz's page works great! (See http://dodgeram.org/tech/repair/fuel_sender/sender.htm ). In fact, it's still working perfectly a couple of years later and 50K more miles!



As was stated previously, the sender part from the stealer... uh,... . dealer is about $45, but it'll just die again in a few months.



When I did the original fix, I kinda went overboard, as I'm often prone to do. The other guy I mentioned had a slightly easier fix (no machining), which sounds like it'd work too.



The whole problem is that the moving part is held in contact by a small plastic flange, which wears away. My original plan was to simply replace the pin with a small bolt (I think 6-32 or maybe 8-32). I was going to just thread the hole in the base plate, screw the bolt in and then put a washer and a nylok nut on the top. I still think this'd work fine. Yeah you need a tap and a drill, but that's real easy in plastic.



But, as usual, I got carried away. I figured that the threads would probably wear the pivot point more than a smooth pin (they would, but probably not much). So I made a new pin like the original, only longer so I could thread it. Then, it still had more slop than I liked, would've been fine, but, Mr. Perfectionist wanted better. That's where the spring came in. Realistically, the contact arm has a spring-type contact, so can take up a fair bit of slop, just not as much as happens when the plastic flange on the original dies.



If you've got any further questions on how to do this, please feel free to ask.



-cj