Running out of gas

[Dr. Ian McArthur]

I just logged on after being away for some time
 however:

 

I have owned 5 Audi 5000 TQs over the years.

 

I had an incident with my last 5Q after a lot of work.  The car just
sputtered and quit one day and I called AMA to tow it home.  Since I had
another identical 5Q for parts I started changing out everything (after many
days trying to find out what was wrong).

 

After another winter of changing out bits and pieces I though it was a flaky
temp sensor so I switched it and the car ran.  I took it for a drive and
after about one mile it sputtered and quit.

 

The problem was I was out of gas.  Six months of work





 

The fuel pump and gas gauge float are attached to a circular panel on top of
the gas tank.  This is attached with three screws equally spaced around the
hole in the gas tank.  I got it one third of the way wrong and the float for
the gas gauge was hung up on the wiring inside the tank.  So the gas gauge
could never register less than a ¼ tank.  I knew this but 

..

My wife brought me a jerry can of gas. The car was just fine.

 


.And I knew about this issue.  Part of my chagrin and history is I have
spent a lot of my working life trying to identify perplexing problems just
like this.  And I knew that only a bunch of idiots could attach a piece in
the trunk while standing on your head and make the three screw holes exactly
the same distances apart so you could put it one third of a turn apart.  The
screw-hole pattern should never be equal.  It was very embarrassing to fall
a victim of a problem that I was well aware of and even more embarrassing is
I never though to post this issue to the Audi list.

 

This is a request for all of you Audi-philes: if you have any similar
instances, please post them on the list.

 

I still have 2 5000TQ’s.  Both are from the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics
batch provided by Audi..  And, no 
 one of them did not drive up the ski
jump.

 

Cheers, Dr. A