I filled up the gas tank and it went up to full and then it said empty out of no wear when driving only about 1 mile. Worked fine again and then now has stayed in the middle between full and empty for about 3 day I’ve only driven 6 miles max with all those days combined. How do I know if there is something wrong with it.
Your question answers that . You said the gauge indicates 1/2 full when you only have driven 6 miles . Any decent shop can solve this for you . Assuming you are not going to fix it yourself.
I had the same problem on my 2006 Uplander. Sending unit.
lemme help: yes, there is something wrong with it.
now whether it is a big deal or not is up to you. I lived with mine until the fuel pump died- like 4 years later (the sending unit for the fuel amount is part of the fuel pump.)
If you keep track of your mileage and how far you have gone since last fill up, you can manage just fine with this issue. If lots of people borrow your truck, or you just don’t want to deal with it- put a fuel pump in it. (although, you may be able to get just a sending unit for this, but with all the effort to swap it out- just do the fuel pump at the same time.)
Let me expand on my earlier post. I owned a 2006 Uplander that I passed down to our son who is still driving it. I bought the Uplander in 2006. It was a “program car” with 15000 miles on the odometer. I got the balance of the warranty. At any rate, while it was still under warranty, the gasoline gauge malfunctioned exactly as you described the gauge malfunctioning in your Uplander. The repair consisted of dropping the tank and installing a new sending unit for the gauge. Apparently, there were several GM models afflicted with this problem in 2006. The gasoline gauge in the Uplander I owned has worked perfectly since that repair.
I might add that I really liked the Uplander. I found the front seat support and driving position better than that in the two Toyota Sienna minivans that I have owned since the Uplander. I think GM made a mistake discontinuing these minivans.
The way it usually works is there’s a gadget inside the gas tank that floats on top of the fuel. That gadget is connected to an arm, and that arm is connected to a variable resistor. The whole shebang is called “the fuel gauge sender”. So during a fill-up the fuel level rises, the arm rises and the resistance changes. Likewise the fuel level drops and the resistance changes in the other direction as you consume gasoline as you drive. The most common problems is the resistor is kaput. Second is the float leaks & stops floating. Third is a bad electrical connection between the sender and the fuel gauge. So your shop could figure out quite a bit about what’s going wrong by measuring the sender’s resistance, and comparing what it should be doing vs what it is doing as the fuel level changes.
where are you filling up . . . ?
sometimes the fuel sending unit is inaccurate because of deposits
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