Fuel Gauge

[angus]

My Fuel gauge not working properly,when I turn on ignition it registers the fuel level,when I turn off ignition it stays at same level.Disconnected tank wires from loom and needle went down,did the bridging wires from loom test and showed full tank,how do I test sender unit and if it`s faulty will 1 from 1980 550l fit mine.Conan
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[rustybronco]

It sounds like the sender (float) is sticking inside the the fuel tank.

[angus]

New Info

When tank has petrol in it and ignition turned on it says how much I have in it,turn ignition off and stays at that level.But when I drive bike and use petrol needel goes down.Should it register pertol level even with ignition off.My mate reckons its working correctly.Conan

[chuck hahn]

When you shut off the key it should go down regardless of the sending units working or not.

With the key off, youre not sending power thru the coil inside the cover of the sending unit..thus you aren't sending a signal from it to the gauge.

Your gauge is just sticking..try turning off the key and then tapping the tach a little.

[angus]

Re

Not sure what you mean by tapping the tac do you mean the gauge on clocks or gauge in tank?.Was going to take gauge out of tank and do resistance check(haynes manual) but guessing there is no need to.Conan

[jona]

When I turn mine off the gas level stays at the last reading and the oil temp drops to it's lowest point.

[BigD_83]

IIRC, the gauge on my 650G drops to E when the power is shut off. I wouldn't worry about it. It's a bit of work pulling/reinstalling the sending unit, and you might need to install new gaskets or risk creating a leak. I'd live with it until I had another reason to do it.

[850GT_Rider]

When you shut off the key it should go down regardless of the sending units working or not.

With the key off, youre not sending power thru the coil inside the cover of the sending unit..thus you aren't sending a signal from it to the gauge.

Your gauge is just sticking..try turning off the key and then tapping the tach a little.

I'm running GS550 gauges on my 850, having replaced the OE ones due to defective speedo and other issues, but the gas gauge was fine.
On both sets, the gas gauge stayed at or near the reading that was there when the key was turned off.

[angus]

Follow on

Have finally decided to live with fuel gauge as it registers fuel being used.So I went for short ride last night and it started misfiring/lacking power.Would drive fine then loose power then burst back to full power.I noticed the 2 outer exhausts were hotter than the inner 2 when I got it home(sprayed water on all 4 downpipes evaporated off outer 2 but took longer to do so on inner 2).Could it be carb balancing,or fuel starvation issues.Conan

[chuck hahn]

Combination of dirty carbs, balancing, valves out of adjustment, poor spark from coils, fouled plugs, resistors in the caps going bad, petcock fuel flow, float hts in the 2 carbs too HIGH,

Pick any or all from the list. Moral of the story....check EVERYTHING to see that ALL are proper.

[rustybronco]

Flip the petcock on reserve and try it again.

[hjfisk]

Flip the petcock on reserve and try it again.

Thats what I was thinking, might be gauge is wrong and you are out of gas

[angus]

Thought I was out of gas last week was doing the same thing put fuel tap to reserve to get home(2 mins from house) ran fine.Put gas into her yesterday and turned fuel tap back to on and started the same thing.Will give it a run tomorrow on reserve and post again.New plugs,caps,carbs stripped and cleaned,not sure if they were balanced though.Conan

[angus]

Finally sorted went to do ohms readings on both coils when trying to put meter lead onto top of bolt holding coil to frame discovered it was loose and cable from coil was making on/off connection tightened bolt and back to normal cheers for help.Conan