Fuel Gauge - Working

Well well well, after a month or so of tinkering, the Fury is all back together & returned to road-worthiness. The principle problem to be solved was the lack of a fuel gauge, it wasn’t a problem for general purpose blatting as I could fill it up before the off & be sure of getting home within the tank-full. But with the Rallye Des Jonquilles approaching as well as the “Rogue Runners” tour of Britain, the need was becoming a pressing one.

So with a heavy heart I started removing the tank all over again. I was expecting to find one or other of the wires to the level sender unplugged or broken by some heavy handedness when re-fitting the tank a while back - but no, all was well. So I took out the sender (a fiddly job at best) with the intention of testing the whole system, it was only when I tried to turn on the ignition that I remembered I’d taken the dashboard out. So – once I’d found it, laid it roughly in the car, plugged in the gauge loom, turned the fuel pump off & the ignition on, twiddling the float on the sender resulted in the needle moving up & down nicely, so it was working – except that I knew that it wasn’t – such is electrical fault chasing.

I put the sender back in the tank & bolted it down. I rocked the tank to & fro & could hear the sender moving, but the needle wasn’t (sigh). When I took the sender out again, I noticed the float was ½ full of petrol, so it had been submerged & sure enough as I re-inserted it, the wire to the float pot got caught round the rod the float attaches to – stopping it moving. I put it back more carefully, rocked the tank again & the gauge came back to life. Hurrah!

So the tank got re-installed & a day or two later the dash went back in, to be followed by a brief drive up to the petrol shop, where £10 worth made the needle go to half full. Job done.

So the next job is to repair the rear valence bracket that came adrift when I took the valence down & apart from a spanner check & maybe some tyres, it’s ready for another year’s blatting.