Uncle Phippy

I wanted to pass this along. My 90 vert had sat for five years non-operational prior to buying it. The P.O. pumped the fuel out of the tank five years ago and that is how it was stored. When I put five gallons of premium fuel in the tank I found the fuel gauge did not work. I was going to buy a new sending unit for around 350 bucks but before I did, I came across a thread in the Sticky's for "Fuel Sending Unit Repair". I removed the unit from my tank, put it on my bench and removed the cover and found the hair like wire coil had broken where the contact point had sat for five years without fuel. I lined up the hairlike wire and put a small drop of solder on it, reassembled it and then placed it back in my tank. It works like a charm and saved me around 350 bucks. Ya gotta love the "Corvette Forum".

GKK

Awesome job!

Frizlefrak

Yep, not much to a sending unit. I'm waiting for a $79 repop from China to show up soon.....meantime, they're easy to fix.

Frizlefrak

BTW....you didn't follow the advice of THIS clown, did you????

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c4-t...h-article.html

SQUIRMIN VERMIN 84

That was a great sticky, Friz!

(For a Clown..) Was it hard to do all that work with big clown shoes and a big red round rubber nose?

Uncle Phippy

Yap, that's the one. Without that thread, I wouldn't have tried it. It saved me a bunch of money and time. By the way, the cheapest repop I could find was 169 bucks. I'm glad I could fix the one I have and it is still working great. Were you that clown Friz? If you were, good job!!!

1bdvet

I hope you noticed if the sending unit had rust. It should not have any rust, if it does you can have failure, which might short out the fuel pump. That is what happened to me, all the rust shorted out the pump, sending unit worked perfectly.

Uncle Phippy

Nope, no rust at all. Tank sat empty for five years and thankfully never rusted. It just had that white looking corrosion where the contact point made contact with the hair like wire coil making it stick to it and ultimately breaking it. The little spot of solder fixed that.

Frizlefrak

Guilty as charged. Back when I was a n00b polluting up the forum with nonsense and conjecture, my sender quit working. In those days they were $350 and not a penny less. I got to thinking there isn't much to one of these.....

I posted the question on here....Mike88Z51 responded and told me what to do. I tried it....$20 and 1 hour later, my gauge worked again. I thanked him, and he suggested I write a tech article. The rest is history.

Funny sidenote....the article got mentioned in one of the Corvette rags a few years later....I'm still waiting for my royalty check.

It doesn't work all of the time....some of them are too far gone, but my repaired unit worked in my 84 for 9 years until I sold the car.

Frizlefrak

No Bunky.....I've been told I'm an assclown, not a circus clown.

Sleazy Rider

even a clown has his day!

jez3941

I took mine apart too after reading the article from Frizlefrak, hoping i could just clean it and found the windings broken. and i pulled just that part from a 91 firebird at a pick-a-part and it worked perfectly.
thanks for the tips.

Frizlefrak

So you combined the two to make one working sending unit??

I'm impressed....and that isn't easy to do. Kudos. That is what this hobby is all about.....

jez3941

yes, but this time it was easy the piece that contains the windings is 100% identical size, location of the 3 tabs, everything. all i had to do was use a butt connector on the wire. sometime soon ill be posting a video of this on my youtube channel 80scarguy

actually i got the idea to do this because i had just finished parting out an 86 trans am and pulled the tank on it, so when i got into the vett i thought hey this looks familiar ill bet most 80's EFI gm cars used the same sending unit.