Date: Thu, 06 Jun 1996 09:40:00 -0700 (PDT)
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: "Maher, Steve (SD-MS)" <SMAHER@gi.com>
Subject: RE: vanagon gas tank remove
>I got my first westy last week, an 83 watercooler from Ron Salmon. It runs
>great and everything works except the gas gauge. I was wondering if anyone
>knew how involved it would be to remove the tank to fix the sender. Any
>info would be appreciated.
The '80 V6anagon has had a flaky gas gauge since I've owned it. It's
never quit completely, but it never used to read Full when I filled it
up, and used to dwell in the red zone on the left side of the gauge for
a loooong period of time without running out.
Don't know if the circuit for your '83 wasserbus is the same as for this
'80 (formerly) aircooled bus. I believe both have a voltage regulator
(Bentley calls it a "voltage stabiliser") in the instrument panel. Mine
powers just the gas gauge, but on wasserbuses I believe it also powers
the coolant-temp gauge (can anybody confirm/deny this?)
I cleaned up the connections on the back of the gas gauge, which helped
some. Bentley also lists a procedure for using an ohmmeter to check if
the sender on the fuel tank, is running thru its proper range for empty
and full tank. Bentley specifies a range of something like 50 to 550
undefined units on VW Specialized Meter Number Such-and-such. I'm pretty
sure these are Ohms-- at least they match on my Digital Multimeter.
I believe the connections on the sender on the gas tank, are dirty
and/or corroded in the V6anagon. On a DMM that uses very small currents
to measure resistance, the resistance of the sender seems exactly right.
But I have a hunch the gas gauge uses more current, which can be affected
by bad connections. So I'll probably have to get religion and pull the
tank to get to them and clean them up.
I've been told that it's not a real difficult procedure on air-cooled
Vanagons-- maybe an hour or so? Don't know if this applies to wasserbuses.
I also tried to put in a higher-voltage regulator for the gauge. Now
full reads full, but I found myself walking when it was still above the
red zone on the gauge. Oopsie... guess I'll just have to give up and
fix it right.
o o o o o o o . . . ________________________________
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o _____ || http://www.wp.com/IrishMafia | | '80 V6anagon
|
.][__n_n_|DD[ ====_____ | Steve Maher smaher@gi.com | | '66 Mustang
Cpv |
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