[V8] Dash Fuel light on/off randomly

[Karl Middlebrooks]

Funny you mention a broken fuel gauge. About a week ago, V8 #2 died on my 
girlfriend (well...not *on* my girlfriend, thankfully...I couldn't stand to 
lose a car and a girlfriend at the same time), and with me down here in the 
Texas desert, there's not much I could do to diagnose it, and I worried that 
the extremely noisy fuel pump had died. She reported that for the last week 
or so, the fuel warning light would come on at times when the gauge read 
half a tank or so.

Since the fuel gauge read about 1/3 of a tank, I figured I'd have to have 
the car towed home. But on a whim, I told her to put about 3-4 gallons in 
the car and see if it helped. Sure enough, filling the tank a bit helped the 
car start right up again.

At the time that it died, the center warning light was on, but the gauge 
showed 1/3 tank, and she believed the gauge was telling the truth (ever the 
optimist), but it apparently wasn't.

That made me wonder exactly the same thing....where does the center warning 
light get its information from?

--------------------------------------------------
From: "NIck Miller" <chance9121 at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009 10:26 PM
To: <v8 at audifans.com>
Subject: [V8] Dash Fuel light on/off randomly

>      So I just fixed my fuel gauge today, finally.  It was actually the
> sender in the tank which had broken.  The flexible one, not the sheathed
> one.
>      I managed to wrestle the sender out this morning and soldered in some
> new wires on both terminals.  I used a run of Thermostat signal wire by
> removing the shielding and using the individual pieces.  Since I didn't 
> have
> any flexible stuff, I made the one which will move with about 4 windings 
> to
> make it work like a spring for movement.  It appears to work quite well.
>
> The only issue I now has is after maybe a few hours today, the Fuel Level
> Low light on the center readout comes on and random intervals and then 
> will
> go away also apparently at random.  Car had just been filled up this
> evening, and the Gauge never showed bellow 17.5 gallons, but still the
> warning light.
>
> Does the Dash warning light use the same signal from the sender as the 
> fuel
> gauge, and does it take that signal and spit it in the Instrument cluster?
> Or are there two seperate signals to troubleshoot?  Just curious about 
> where
> I need to go, I'll probably do some board swapping in the IC tomorrow
> morning.  Thanks all.
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