docjim Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Well, I did it again. Bought a fuel gauge that's the opposite of the fuel sender (gauge: 0 empty, 90 full and sender: 90 empty, 0 full). Is there a DIY fix or do I need another gauge? I wonder if there is a way to move 1 wire on the sender to the opposite end of the resistor? Any electrical genius out there know what to do? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seattlejester Posted January 2, 2015 Share Posted January 2, 2015 Unfortunately most likely not, unless your gauge is the universal style with the looped wires you can cut. Options... Return gauge and get the correct one? Invert the float on the sender, this only works if there is adequate space, but if you flip the float arm it will in fact read backwards. For the technical solution you would follow option two outlined in this article. http://nutsvolts.texterity.com/nutsvolts/201101?pg=78#pg78 It is quite a bit of work though. Given that it is a single wire resistance reading it isn't easily inverted. If you really didn't want any of that hassle, you could go to the dollar store and buy a sheet of stickers and place an "E" on the "F" spot and vice versa. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RPMS Posted January 2, 2015 Share Posted January 2, 2015 When I bought an AutoMeter gauge, I flipped the stock sender so it would read "correctly". It never quite worked right. The highest the gauge would read was 3/4 full, and it stayed there until the tank was 1/4 full. Then the gauge raced to 1/8 and stayed there until I was on vapors. It was a cheap solution, but not a good one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
docjim Posted January 2, 2015 Author Share Posted January 2, 2015 Would it be possible to attach a wire to the opposite end of the variable resistor on the sender? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seattlejester Posted January 2, 2015 Share Posted January 2, 2015 You mean wire the sender backwards? I don't think so, it reads resistance, so it reads the resistance in the circuit. It would still have resistance when it empty and none when it is full. Either that or it wouldn't work at all. It's kind of like a switch, doesn't matter if you change the wiring the switch still remains open when open and closed when closed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
docjim Posted January 2, 2015 Author Share Posted January 2, 2015 I meant that now the gauge is connected to the variable arm of sender resistor and the ground is connected to 1 end of resistor. If a wire was attached to the other end, it should read correctly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seattlejester Posted January 2, 2015 Share Posted January 2, 2015 Hmm not sure I follow, you mean if you placed just a piece of wire between the the resistance circuit and bridged that to ground? That would essentially short the circuit and it would read 0 ohms all the time. I could just not be following your logic, but while you can increase or decrease resistance, inverting it is not very easy. Hence the figure in my post above. Would truly be easier to get a new sender or new gauge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
docjim Posted January 2, 2015 Author Share Posted January 2, 2015 here is a poorly drawn schematic of the sender. If a wire is attached to the floating end of the variable resistor, wouldn't that make it read correctly? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seattlejester Posted January 3, 2015 Share Posted January 3, 2015 Still not sure I follow. Stock it should be Gauge -->Signal contact of the sender --> Variable resistor -->Ground contact --> ground on vehicle. Where would you propose to add the wire? I mean I read up on all this, and then dumped all the knowledge when I figured it out, but the gist of it was to just buy a matching sender and gauge. The work arounds weren't quite as useful and as RPMS points the sweep characteristic might change and it could be make you miscalculate how much fuel you actually have left. I mean if you were determined to check, pull out a multimeter and see if your theory works. I really can't figure out how you would get that to read correctly with just one wire. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
docjim Posted January 3, 2015 Author Share Posted January 3, 2015 Here is what I meant, but expressed poorly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seattlejester Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 (edited) Don't think that is how the sender is built. You are essentially trying to wire the sender backwards. I think if you do that it will only read full until you hit empty and then it will drop to E all of a sudden. Edited January 5, 2015 by seattlejester Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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