I've got my C5 in the shop getting the infamous fuel senders fixed. They found the left one bad and replaced it.

To do that, they said they had to drain the tank, remove it, fix the sender, and replace the tank.

I thought the tank could be left alone with the fuel senders needed to be replaced? Did I just misread? :o

You'd think something like this would have been figured out by now and wouldn't break anymore.

 

It's back and all fixed. Yay! :D

I noticed the list price on the fuel sender was $488! Yowzah. For a super common failure, that has to burn some GM profit over time.

They mentioned it was shorted out. Since mine failed when I hit a wicked bump, it makes me think some of the wiring connections to it weren't tight or something.... Hmm.. Comments?

 

I have had this happen to me twice and have had the senders replaced twice. I do not think the bump was the cause, I was told that the senders are not sealed very good and gas gets into the sender and shorts it out. Hope your's stays fixed!! :rolleyes:

 

What were your symptoms?

 

What problems or symptoms were you experiencing? We would like to be on the lookout......

 

The first and second time mine was "fixed" :rolleyes: they did not drain the tank (or perhaps refilled it.) The third time it was drained (and not refilled. :mad)

I hope GM is having their profit eaten on this one... I know my time has been eaten running back and forth to the dealer. :mad

 

My symptoms: right before 1/2 on the fuel guage, the guage would drop to empty and all the appropriate warnings come on. Power cycling does no good. Filling up the tank solves the problem, until the next time it returns to the magic spot.

If I understand the design correctly, the magic spot is when it switches from one fuel sender to another. One was just busted.

What's interesting about mine is when it first occured... I was driving hard on a bumpy, curvy downhill and hit a bump big enough to cause my CD changer to skip. Exactly at that same time, all sorts of warning bells go off, my fuel gauge drops to empty, and diagnostic code P1431 gets logged. I was not near 1/2 fuel level at the time... Hmm...

Of course there are several other posts in this forum section with the TSB all about the problem. I thought mine was just a stuck floater arm, until it happened again.

Like most problems, I don't mind it happening once. But I get a little annoyed that people have repeat problems with it. That hints strongly at a design flaw. From the statistics I've seen (consumer reports and a few other sites), this is among, if not the, most common failure in C5 Corvettes. You'd think they'd get it right by now.

At least it doesn't render the car undriveable or anything... just a little inconvinent... that and it took two days to get repaired. :rolleyes:

 

That reminds me of a problem I had with my '99 Chrysler 300M (first year they made it)... I had various power-window motors replaced 4 times before they found the root cause. A common problem with that year's model (and the only problem I had with it).

I always laughed when it happened... power-window motors are something that engineers should have figured out a long time ago. But, I know how engineers work (I am one, too), and we like to muck with stuff to make it "better" and then we forget to test it out for all those old problems we already solved. Doh. :D