Fuel Gauge suddenly faulty

[giselle]

[caution: total newbie who doesn't know anything about bikes yet]

Okay, I'm not a whiz at this kind of stuff but isn't the gauge suppose to go up (over to F) when you add fuel to the tank?? I put 5L of gas into the tank the other day (with a can of carb cleaner) and not only did the needle not go up... it completely dropped past E.

Any guesses as to what happened? I'm a bit baffled that it was working before, but suddenly changed its mind.

..... help!

[Steve]

First, where the needle ends up after adding 5L of fuel would depend on how much gas was in the tank to start with.

If the tank was totally empty, 5L would just fill the reserve part of the tank, which, on my wife's 850L, would take the gauge just below the red section.

There is a remote possibility that the gauge has failed, but it is also possible that the sending unit has a problem. One thing that happens occasionally is the float comes off the arm in the tank, and needs to be re-attached.

To determine where the fault lies, open (remove, if necessary) the seat, look near the rear of the tank to see if you can see the wires coming from the fuel sender. There will be two wires that are bundled together that lead into the main harness with bullet connectors. See if they are intact and snug. If the gauge still does not work, take the connectors apart, connect the two wires from the main harness, the gauge should read FULL. This test will tell you if the problem is with the gauge or the sending unit. Check this and let us know what you find.

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[Redman]

Hum, lets see, 5L, ah, 5 liters, thats ah, maybe 1 1/2 gallons.
SO that is probably only about 30% of the tank's capacity, right?

See if the guage comes back up after the gas level goes down a bit. If it does; maybe a portion of the sender unit (in the tank) is bad, and will indicate empty when the gas level is above that bad part of the sender.

If it continues to read empty all the time: then maybe the sender has complety fail, or the guage (in the instrument cluster) has failed, or the wiring has come apart. You can find that wiring as described in previous post. Can check out the sender with a multi-meter.

Either way, fill up the tank, and use the trip meter, and use the main/reserve position on the petcock, like we all used to do (and many other still do).

Tell us more what happens, and we can help you further.

PS: If you dont have a multimeter ... this may not be your only occassion to have need of one, ... so might want to get one sooner or later.

Oh, And welcome to GSR.

.

[tkent02]

http://www.dslextreme.com/users/bikecliff/images/GSfuelguagesendunitrepair_by_mr_jethro.pdf

Just did this to my 1000 yesterday, works perfectly now, took about a half an hour to do.
No meter required, just plug the sender back into it's connectors on the bike, turn the key on (kill switch off) move the float arm and watch the gauge work.