Fuel Interaction with Tank Sending Unit By oldscootcoot (Read 356 times)

[oldscootcoot]

Both my wife and I were marveling at the fuel mileage our scoots were getting. Been riding a while on about half a tank. Figured Id better have a look in the tank. We were both on fumes!
Had a look today at the sending units. Both were bound and took a good amount of effort to move. Electrically they were fine, just stuck.
They had worked perfectly on the first few tanks.

The fix was to move the press nut retaining the shaft of the float arm. The plastic body of the unit had apparently swollen Im guessing from the ethanol in our fuel, basically locking the float arm. I simply pried the nut up the shaft a bit and the arm flopped around freely again and the gauge worked as normal. You have to be careful not to loosen it too much or the electrical contact that rides the resistance grid may loose contact. Glad it was this easy.

Moral of the story is with these undampened type gauges look for needle movement(carefully) while riding. If you don't see any your unit may be stuck.

[Guitarman]

Good advice. I fill up every 150 miles whether I need it or not. I use my trip meter to keep track.

[LUKE]

yeah, those floats in the fuel gauges get stuck once in a while, you may need to ride over a pothole every now and then to loosen it. gosh! these never happens in a japanese scooter.fyi

[kz1000st]

Maybe in Arizona that never happens but both my Big Ruckus and Kawasaki W650 had their floats stick in the carburetor. I fixed the Big Ruckus by following Luke's advice. I found every bump in the road and eventually gas stopped pouring out the overflow. A little Seafoam might have helped the swelling of the fuel sensors. It seems to be a cure for many ethanol ills.

[FrankenMech]

I am thinking about buying one of those fuel bottles that hikers etc use to hold Coleman fuel etc. It would work as a 'reserve' tank. Just dump the 'reserve' into the tank at every fuel stop and refill the bottle to keep it fresh.

Otherwise, avoid Ethanol like the plague.

[oldscootcoot]

Being a coastal area there is non ethanol fuel available. Its is a bit more costly and only at certain locations. I run basically what is at the pumps. I agree with the use of Seafoam. Been using it in my hand held 2 stroke stuff as it makes the fuel less hard on the diaphrams in the carbs.

One can always remove the ethanol from the fuel, but that leaves questions of the remaining fuels octane rating.

[alansd]

this just happend to my scooter, the fuel gauge was stuck or moving very slowly. I ran out of gas, luckily in my driveway!
So how did you get to the arm in the tank?

[bobf]

I don't know what you ride so really don't know. But for me I had to locate the tank and then remove some plastics to get access to the gauge port. It was under the floor board and that meant that I had to loosen two front panels and two rear side panels in order to get the floor board off.

Then it was just the effort to remove 4 screws, disconnect a couple wires, carefully slip the entire gauge out from the tank. Be careful as in my tank it was a close fit and I had to maneuver the gauge a bit to bring the bend float shaft out without damaging anything.

When satisfied that the gauge is free, return it in the opposite way that you removed it. Not hard to do, just need to be able to say I did nothing to bend or jam the float lever, and I was careful to get gasket back in place before tightening the screws.
.

[alansd]

I think I will have to remove the under seat plastic, and get to it that way. Meanwhile I iwll just be sure to add gas once a week or so.
Its a Bashan " Victory" 2011 model.