gas tank sender???

[ratking20]

my gas gauge does not work. im going to replace the sender anyway, hopefully that is the problem.
how do i know what sender to buy. i have a 1992 sea ray 220 bowrider. the gas tank is out at the moment as i am replacing the stringers and deck. i cant tell the make of the tank. its about a 40 gallon tank. its shaped rectangular with a deeper V at the bottom. the height at the middle is 11" from the top of the tank to the botom of the V

 

[muvybuf]

I am NOT an expert,but I replaced mine this summer on my 1995 Wellcraft Eclipse 196 S. It seems like most of the senders with a float arm of this era have the same bolt pattern. I pulled mine out to take a look at it. Figured it would improve my odds of finding the right one. Went to West Marine and they have a couple generic replacements. If you have the same pattern you need to know the depth of your tank. Easy to measure with the sender out. You look up the depth of your tank in the chart and cut the float arm to the matching length. The hardest part was matching the pattern during install. The 5 or so machine screws are not equal distances apart so you have to try and turn and try and turn till they match up. There is a trouble shooting process to tell if the sender was bad. Don't know if I found it in my manual or on this sight. Measure the resistance between the center post and the edge clip. You should see one resistance when arm is up (tank full) and another with the arm down (tank empty). I don't remember the values,but I could look them up if you need them. I bet others will remember.

Good luck,

Dave

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk.

 

[Lyle29464]

Re: gas tank sender???

I would take the sender to the store. I just changed 2 of them. holes were off and the float would not clear the side of the tank. I bought the kind with a flat round plate and it was easy to redrill. remember from 1/4 to empty is going to happen fast with a V shape tank. see what kind of gauge you have. That is what you need to match. You can run your wires before you install the sender and then move float to get a reference of where full 1/2 full and empty is. Lot better then having to learn empty the hard way. I set mine so it says empty with a good reserve left.

 

[Silvertip]

Re: gas tank sender???

Why not determine what the problem is before replacing a sender only to find the gauge still doesn't work. 1) Turn on the ignition, 2) stick your head under the console and short the "S" (send) terminal on the gauge to the ground terminal. If the gauge pegs full it is good. If not, either +12 volts (the "I" terminal) or ground is missing. Fix it and gauge will likely work again. If the gauge checks ok, then either the pink wire going back to the sender is bad, the connection at the sender is bad, the sender is not grounded, or the sender itself is bad. An ohm meter can check all of these. To check the sender disconnect the pink wire from the threaded terminal. Measure resistance from that terminal to ground. If you know roughly how much fuel is in the tank, the resistance should be 30 ohms (full tank) 109 ohms (roughly) at 1/2 tank, and 240 ohms with an empty tank.