Thread: Fluctuating fuel quantity gauge

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I have an interesting but not uncommon situation that there just might be an answer for but haven't seen it yet. I have VDO gauges and am experiencing a rather annoying fluctuating fuel gauge, sometimes full scale fluctuation depending on fuel quantity and movement of the car. Yes, the tank has baffles, 2 each that run fore and aft on each side of the sender. My question is, has anyone ever heard of an attenuator circuit for the fuel quantity indicating system. This certainly sounds doable, any "sparkies" out there with an answer??? Thanks for any comments.

Check for continuity on the grounds, both at the tank sending unit and the gauge. If the grounds ohm out good, remove the sender and clean the windings, check the resistance from full to empty and make sure it matches the impedance of the gauge.

Side to side baffles dont take care of fore to aft movement of the fluid. Do you have a sender that has the float on an arm? Perhaps you can reorient the arm 90 degrees to reduce the effect of the fluid movement (assuming that the problem is occurring due to slosh of the gas).

You probably cant use fuel cell foam to reduce the slosh because it will interfere with the moving pickup. When we use fuel cell foam in a tank, we use an inductive fuel level sensor.

Here is an inductive pickup that works well:

http://www.centroidproducts.com/

We have used two of them and they work great off road where there is a lot of slosh.

Mike in Tucson

Thanks guys for the responses. I'm gonna be pullin' the tank to check this out and I'll keep in mind these ideas. I really like the inductive sending device. If I have to get a new sender that's the route I'll go.