captain_camaro

has anyone found a modification or a trick to the up n down fuel gauge? i fill the tank, go on the street when i stop it goes from full tank to a quarter down then back up....it gets to me kuz some times i reach the empty mark n wen i go fill up it fills with 10 bucks..... ALL CHEVYS ARE LIKE THIS but there has to be a mad man out there who has found a cure.. any tricks people??

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92purplehaze

I try to not look at it when stopping or making right turns..lol

87Marro

Must be the floater

cIaRmOaCrZo

it is def the floater, because when that moves up and down, it changes resistance in relation to its position, which is the supplied voltage to the guage. so basically the float arm is very "friction-less" or free moving.. idk how to explain. i dont wanna say "loose" because that sounds worn out. with cars that take forever for the fuel gauge to budge, its because the floater arm is "stiff", so its reaction is slowed. my camaro is the exact same way, if you jerk the wheel, or tap the brakes, ect, my guage needle can actually move to the rythem of the waves inside the tank lol.

cIaRmOaCrZo

as for tricks to correct that,,, idk lol. never tried. whatever you can do to make the float arm "stiffer" i guess.

Russ-So Cal

Since th efloat arm is in the tank, you will have to remove the fuel tank to do anything with it. Keep close track of your fuel economy in various driving circumstances and conditions, then forget the gauge and use your resettable trip odometer to figure out when to fill up.

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"Aerodynamics are for people who can't make horsepower"-Enzo Ferrari

kkingsrulee

I just figured a lot of older cars had gauges like this, it makes sense, when you're turning right, all the fuel is pushing toward the left side of the tank, resulting in a lower relative position of the float.

Same as wet vs. dry sump oiling systems.

What you have to watch out for is when you're driving on the freeway on a long trip, when you pull off the freeway and stop watch the needle drop.

Russ-So Cal

The other thing to keep in mind is if you make a habit of trying to run your fuel level below 1/4 of a tank before filling, you risk the fuel sloshing away from the pick up and letting the pump run dry for a few seconds. The fuel lubricates and cools the pump which has much tighter tolorances than an old school low pressure pump. You wouldn't let your engine run low on oil so that oil pressure dropped for a few seconds when you turn, accelerate, or brake, why do it with a fuel pump. True the fuel pump is a lot less expensive than an engine, but changing it out is still a pita.

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"Aerodynamics are for people who can't make horsepower"-Enzo Ferrari

captain_camaro

i NEVER let my tank go below half.....i did a fuel pump job on mine...n im pretty sure non of us would like to do it again!

cIaRmOaCrZo

yeah fuel pump jobs on thirdgens = hell!!!! lol BUT i do know another way of doing it thats much faster....lol but thats completely up to you to (and i would not do it to my own cars)(well actually id do it to my rs, but thats it lol) its not recomended, but you can pull up the hatch carpet and cut an access hole in the high part of the trunk and do the fuel pump job all from the top. then cover it all back up. to make a "nicer" job on it, id make a removable pannel on the metal part so it looks clean and not all ghetto and haggard. just throwin that out there lol

captain_camaro

actually yea, one of my coworkers at autozone did that to his 92 iroc....it makes the job WAAAAY easier...but the way he did it made it look all ghetto....he put like a litle door with a lock n crap n the carpeting he put some of that double sided tape n peals it when he pleases...you cant tell kuz he put that leather tire cover for the spares(i think thats what its for) n u cant tell but when its removed you make a natural reaction of "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO? (o.0)" LOL

gmsoldier

yeah the hillbilly that i got my iroc from did a very poor job of cutting an access panel, so im stuck correcting his mistakes......not a procedure that i would recomend, BUT if anyone decides to go that route, there is a post from a guy on here that went the whole nine yards and made the panel, gasket, etc, and made it look clean.....once again, NOT recomended but people are gonna do what they want lol

cIaRmOaCrZo

****in hillbilly lol, there was so much **** we had to go over and correct cuz of that hillbilly. Haha thadt be hillarious if he is someone on this forum and didn't know we're talkin about him as the hillbilly

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"current" mods: slp cold air, jet air foil, throttle body coolant by-pass, ported plenum, hooker super comp headers, custom y-pipe, flowmaster delta force muffler, custom burned chip through dyno tuning, corvette servo, beast sunshell, shift kit

gmsoldier

haha there is still a lot more sh**t to correct too man. lol

cIaRmOaCrZo

for sure lol

katy91

yeah i have the same problem.... when i first got my car it read a little over a quarter tank and my car died at a red light haha.... made it to a gas station to fill up and i could hear the gas dropping in the empty-ness of my tank.... now i know not to let it go to far past half a tank. but like u said sometimes itll read half a tank and u put less than $10 in and its full.....

Russ-So Cal

Keep in mind that the tank has a sort of trapizoid cross section with the narrow part at the bottom in order to allow clearance for the rear axle and suspension as well as the muffler. The gauge is on a float and as far as I know it only reads in a linear fashion. Example, if the tank is 12 inches deep, 6 inches down is 1/2; but there is significantly less fuel in the bottom 6 inches than there is in the top. Therefore, you can seem to drive forever before the level drops to 1/2, but then it seems to fall to empty very quickly thereafter.

Birdstheword909

do this is normal for our cars then ? because i can fill up my tank with 20 bones "wich we all wish was true" is my floater out or wtf? because as soon as it reads 1/4 , my tank is empty .

Russ-So Cal

Your best bet is to track you fuel mileage in the type of driving you do most often. Then reset your trip odometer to 0 everytime you fill. If you average 200 miles to a tank, stop every 150 miles to fill. The other thing is to check your gauge while sitting on the flat before you leave to run an errand, or whatever. If you have 1/2 tank and your are running 5-10 miles, you don't need to concern yourself with what the gauge does while you are stopping, starting, and turning.

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"Aerodynamics are for people who can't make horsepower"-Enzo Ferrari

brandotron

I forget exactly which years it was (do a search), but the later thirdgen years had baffled fuel tanks to prevent this exact thing. I've had a 91 and an 88. The needle in the 88 moved when stopping, turning, etc, but the 91 did not. Get a later model fuel tank.

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kkingsrulee

If someone could fabricate baffles into our fuel tanks I think it would help the problem.

The same way baffled oil pans combat oil starvation under g-loads.

lonsal

Did he use masking tape for the electrical work he did under the dash? That's one I discovered on my IROC.

Lon

Tpx

You can use a liquid filled (usually oil filled) gauge, that will resist movement and significantly negate the fluctuation you're experiencing, but the downside is it's gonna be an aftermarket gauge.