Front Tank Sending Unit

[icanfixall]

While surfing Ebay I found a tank sending unit for my front tank. Its an item I saw before but wasn'y home to bid on it at the last second. Well this time I was. I paid $29.95 for it..... I lost the foot on my sucken pickup some time ago. I have been playing with a section of hose for way too long. So for this price how can I go wrong.... Slap me silly and call me Skippy.... Another find... But this one wont find a place behind the rear seat. It goes in soon as it gets here...

 

[Exekiel69]

Nice, last time I got one I was at the Jyard but could not find anything on-line.

 

[f-two-fiddy]

Nice score.
I think I paid over $130 for the front sender for my 93.The damn pickup screen fell off'n it in less than a year.

I've been looking for both senders for my 85, for 2 years now.

 

[icanfixall]

Before I install the sender-pickup I'm going to "improve it" so the foot doesn't drop off. Not sure how just yet because I have never seen a complete one before...

 

[hesutton]

Before I install the sender-pickup I'm going to "improve it" so the foot doesn't drop off. Not sure how just yet because I have never seen a complete one before...

Dude, my new one fell out/apart in 3 months! I replaced the crappy rubber (and prone to an early and annoying death) pickup with a piece of Goodyear fuel line with fishmouth cut in the bottom. It's held on with a small hose clamp. Works like a charm and has for since june '06 (two years).

Heath

 

[LCAM-01XA]

My front pickup is still holding up, seeing how I can run my tank damn near empty and not get air intrusions. That, or some previous owner actually pulled the thing off, and did the hose with a clamp mod. Would be nice to see what a stocker looks like tho, can you take some pics when you get it, Icanfixall?

 

[NCheek]

I used some washers, stainless mesh, and a little brazing to fix mine. Combined with a little tweaking on the tube and I can empty the tanks no problem...

Too bad I can't tell when the end is coming

 

[LCAM-01XA]

Nick, let me guess, dead fuel gauge sender? I just drive mine for 200 miles city (assume 10mpg, I know tis better tho), then fill up before I go on the freeway and then I go 350 miles the either fill up, or switch to the other tank.

 

[NCheek]

Yeah, the sender is toast. I tried rounding up some resistor wire and fixing it the old fashioned way and ditching the printed resistor that it came with, but I ran out of spring break before I could get it done...

I really wish I would have had a camera to take pictures of my fix for the pickup screen. My dad used to work for the paper mill in town and somehow got a hold of some stainless mesh that was so fine that a paper fiber couldn;t fit through it. I took some washers and basically made a cylindrical screen and than fitted it to the pickup tube. I don't think it will be falling of any time soon!

 

[LCAM-01XA]

Nick, more info on the printed resistor replacement, please?

 

[NCheek]

I'll try to give the basic ideas of a homemade fix, but I haven't actually done this myself...

The stock Ford sending unit uses creates between 78 and 10 ohms resistance based on the level of the fuel in the tank. The factory design uses a printed circuit to create this resistance, but over time, this circuit becomes worn and might read accurately for part of the tank and then empty for the rest, or just read empty all of the time.

To fix it, you would need to acquire some resistive wire, and measure out a length that is in the neighborhood of 80 ohms. The best place to get it would be scavenging it off of a wire wound potentiometer. My problem was find a wire wound potentiometer that was low enough resistance (which equates to long enough wire to wrap around the frame) You then need to wrap it around a homemade frame that would take the place of the printed, duplicating the sweep of the circuit and attach the wire to the leads where the circuit was connected. Reassemble the unit, and plug it in to the truck and test the full range, making sure that there a no gaps in the readout, and if satisfactory, repeat the process to the other sending unit.

Unlike the stock design, this will not wear out any time soon.

If I end up re-doing mine, I'll try to make a writeup of it...

 

[LCAM-01XA]

Aight, some dumb questions - how does a coil (as that's essentially what you're building) change the resistance? If it don't, why even bother with the wire and all, and not just use a straight-up 80-ohm resistor in there?

 

[f-two-fiddy]

If My thinking is correct, a resistor will give you one constant reading. Not change when the float moves?

When I put my new front sender in, I looked at the old one and saw that the pick up held up fine for 15 years. So I didn't bother to modify the new one. What a mistake that was.

 

[NCheek]

The coil gives you many paces of contact with the resistive wire. Depending on the length of wire included in the circuit for that particular fuel level, the resistance can change from 78 to 10 ohms in the case of our fords. Basically, you are rebuilding the potentiometer to have the correct ohm range and working arc for this application.

If you were to just put a resistor, you would just show one fuel level, and that wouldn't do very much good...

 

[MIDNIGHT RIDER]

I know this has been discussed before, and some mistakenly/accidentally ended up with the wrong senders and they didn't work for them; but, I followed FELROs (or Felro86 or whatever it is) TECH article on replacing the sender with a $16 J.C.Whitney unit of the same ohms as our senders.

I accomplished this sender swap in one afternoon, adding a fish-mouthed weighted length of fuel-hose in place of the missing plastic bell-mouth screen, and my gauge has worked flawlessly ever since.


I took a lot more pains and measurements, when adjusting the float-arm, and the F to E readings are a lot more accurate than the factory readings ever were.


This was done on my front tank; so far, the rear sender and pick-up still work perfectly; this may or may not have something to do with the fact that my FACTORY ORIGINAL rear tank is a plastic tank, whereas many tell me that their rear tanks are metal.

My front tank is metal.



And, for what it's worth, the J.C.Whitney sender-unit is a far superior design than the factory Ford unit.