From the day I brought the Brave home, the gas gauge was inoperable. I had no way of knowing how much gas I had in the tank. Not knowing the tank capacity or the gas mileage I hadn't figured a way to be comfortable on a long trip.

I found a broken wire coming from the area of the top of the tank that looked like it might be the sending unit wire, but I couldn't see where it connected, let alone access the sender if it was broken.

Not wanting to completely drain the tank or break my back trying to wrestle the tank out by hand, I picked up a lift table at Kragen for $99.
It was the perfect height and capacity to support the half full tank while I took out the 4 1/2" bolts that held it in place.

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Once the tank was lowered enough to remove the sending unit I saw that the broken wire was, indeed, the one that goes from the sender to the gas gauge in the dash. Unfortunately I could not find the other end of the broken wire or locate it under the dash. The dash had 2 unused 2" gauge locatons so I was off to Kragen Perfomance shop in Campbell to find a Chrysler style fuel gauge. $19.99 later I was on my way back to the stalag to install it.

While the sender was out I hooked it up to the gauge on the bench. It was off by a mile. It could not reach full when the float was in the full up (floated) position. The gauge would read below "E" when in the full down position. After a little "surgery" on the plastic housing and some slight bending of the float rod, I got the gauge to read correctly.

Taking the sender all the way out was not a waste of time after all!

By this time it was getting dark so I re-installed the sender in top of the tank, replaced the rotting fuel lines, jacked it back up and bolted it all back in place. That was enough for one day. I needed a few connectors and wire ties to complete the job anyway.

Today after work I picked up the few items I needed at OSH and headed for the stalag.

The gauge is backlighted so I needed to find a circuit that dimmed with the dash lights to wire the bulb to. Once I located that I hooked up the bulb. The other connections were (+) and (-) and the sender input.

I hooked up the (+) to an ignition controlled 12V circuit and ran the sender wire down through the floor and along the frame with the rest of the wire loom, attaching it every foot with a wire tie. I used waterproof heat shrink tubing on the splices that are under the rig and exposed to moisture.

I hopped into the Brave and turned the key. Low and behold the gauge moved slowly and smoothly to show 1/2 a tank of fuel. As I rotated the headlight knob the gauge backlight dimmed along with the rest of the dash.

w00t!

I'll use my new lift table to remove the undercarriage propane tank for a good wire brushing and paint job. Leales would not fill it due to the surface rust on the tank. If i can't make it pretty enough to fill, I'll get an adapter to hook up a BBQ tank until I can get the tank rebuilt and recertified.

Next stop, Dark Skies!

skid