Charging System Troubleshooting--Blown Ignition Light Fuse?

[ACHiPo]

Originally Posted by patrickt

Well, it could be the sending unit. With the pink wire disconnected, everything except the fuel level meter works perfectly. So, I would try running a fresh, temporary, fused wire to the pink wire connection at the fuel sender unit. Disconnect the existing pink wire at both the dash end and the fuel tank end (just in there's a chaffing fault along it somewhere). Put a five amp fuse on the new fresh wire and run it to the pink terminal at the sender unit and then see if: 1) the fuel level gauge works when the car is on, and for how long, or 2) whether that new fuse blows. If the new fuse works for a while, and then blows, upping the amp value of the fuse might be a possibility to consider... but it is the fuel tank....

Sometime overnight I remembered Doug telling me to remove the connector behind the driver's side rear wheel and short the forward pink wire to ground. If the gauge responded it meant the fuel sender was bad. (This was several weeks ago when I just had a flaky gas gauge).

My guess is that the gauge was not reading correctly yesterday, but was just responding to having the pink wire grounded. If that's the case, then the gauge would have continued to climb to full given enough time.

So I definitely have a bad sending unit.

I still don't understand what happened to the short? I like your idea of running a separate fused wire to to the pink sender, although I think I will try inserting the fuse where I've already cut the wire. I can run a 5A fuse in that wire and a 15A in #3 so the fuel sender fuse would blow first and not impact my charging.

I'm also going to call Bob and Peter first thing tomorrow and get their ideas.

I think I need to drop the tank to replace the sender? At a minimum I will need to get the car up on a lift to access the sender wire at the sender if it seems there is a chafed wire.