I thought your answer to the backwards reading gas gauge question was pretty lame. How about maybe everybody was telling the truth, and the float assembly had been mounted upside down? Perhaps it was of rather symmetrical construction and looked fine either way.

It seems to me I remember a caller from some years back that had a Ford Tempo which had an electrrical fire in the dashboard. The caller had substuted the cluster from a Mercury Topaz. All worked correctly except the gas gauge which read backward. Tom and Ray suggested that the owner live with i…

I rented a brand new Chevy HHR a month ago that did exactly the same thing. The guy checking me out pointed out it had a half tank and I needed to return the car with the same level. I drove it a total of about 450 miles. The gauge advanced to nearly full in about 220 miles and and I filled it. …

I like PurplePhlogiston’s & Triedaq’s diagnosis— the float arm on the sending unit is essentially mounted backwards, giving max resistance when full rather than empty. It’s easy to switch the max and min on some senders; I converted my Mercedes 300sd to run on WVO, with a two tank system. I wante…

I was thinking that IF the chafed wire excuse was correct, AND the chafed wire was around the gas tank - the weight of the gasoline might shift the tank enough to un-short the short.

I am a computer controls engineer. While I know nothing about fuel level sending units, I felt it only proper to add my worthless two cents, since “I wasted a perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk”. An interesting question to ask would have been “does the gage go to full instead of empty when …

I’d like to +1 keithbeidelman’s comment. A reverse wired potentiometer in the sending unit sounds exactly right.

Reverse pot equals the electrical equivalent of upside down! Could be easy to do if the connector wasn’t polarized.

I have a possible explanation for the question about the fuel gauge operating backwards. The gauge normally has two magnets; the one on the left (empty end) operates at full voltage all of the time. The one on the right is in series with a variable resistor on the sender; when the tank is full the…

I bought a 1970 VW bus that had this problem. The guy who sold it to me demonstrated his technique for checking the tank. He would stand in the middle of the cargo area and rock the van back and forth until you could hear the sound of sloshing gasoline. Replacing the sending unit on that model would…

Backwards gas gauge

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Joseph_E_Meehan June 20, 2011, 6:26pm 11

Since we are, sort of, on the subject, My 2002.5 New Beetle VW has started giving a low fuel light when the fuel is full or any time it is not low. Then when it is low, the light goes out. The low fuel chime is also opposite. Other than the opposite indicators, it appears accurate.

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Backwards gas gauge

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