Today I noticed that my fuel guage wasn't working. I put 10 bucks in and it was reading full. Anyone know what the problem may be?

 

a wire grounding out somewhere, when its near empty check the voltage at the wires going to the sender it should be less than 12v if you use a test light it should be dim not bright at near empty, if you have a bright light and the gauge is still on full the wire is grounding out somewhere

 

Test your fuel gauge sending unit to see it it is working.
Pick up an inexpensive voltmeter at radioshack that will mearure volts dc and ohms.

-Remove Your back seat bottom, use a 10MM wrench on the one bolt found under the carpet in the center back of the bottom part of the seat. Hinge the back of the seat up to get the 2 front clips to release from the floor. You will have to play with it a bit.

-Remove the Sending unit access cover in the center of the car where you removed the seat

-Disconnect the two pin connector from the gas tank.

-Using a voltmeter connect the red lead on the voltmeter to the yellow/white wire and the black lead to the black wire. When you turn your ignition on you should see around 12V there. If you do not get 12V Check the No. 1 Fuse 10AMPS in the fuse panel.

If you have 12V this verifys that the car is powering the sending unit.

Now to verify the sending unit operation.

- Set the voltmeter to measure ohms. It is the ohmega symbol on the meter.

Touch the one meter probe to each of the contacts inside the plug on the sending unit located on top the gas tank.

When full you should measure 2 to 5 ohms
When 1/2 full you should measure 25 to 40 ohms
When empty you should measure 105 to 110 ohms

Try draining off some gas to verify that the measurement changes as you lower the gas level.

If the measurement doesn't change you need a new sending unit
if it does change then we have verified that it is operating properly.

The last thing to check would be the gauge operation. Turn your ignition on without the sending unit plugged in and you should see the gauge start moving for empty do not let it go past empty it may have a chance of damaging it. Put a small wire jumper between the 2 contacts on the vehicle side of the 2 pin plug. When you turn your ignition on you should watch for the needle to raise towards full but never ever let the needle go past full because you could damage your gauge.

Hopefully this helps you identify where your problem is.

Kris

 

haha CRX Jimmy replied while I was typing my long instrustion list. It is nice to be a member of a group where there are so many helpful people.

 

Thanks for the help!