Odyssey
Active Member
Both of my fuel gauges went out within a 4 month period of time and I just finished fixing them. It was an interesting repair so I thought I would post it in case others had a similar issue.
My boat is a 1995, the fuel tanks were made by Florida Marine Tanks and the gauges were made by Rochester Gauges. The set up is as follows....
There is a gauge with a float arm inside the tank. it is bolted down to the top of the tank and is completely sealed.
There is a "cup" on top of the gauge. A dial/sending unit sits in the cup and is held down with 2 machine screws..
My particular boat has what is called twin site dials where you can see the amount of fuel in the tank by looking directly at the dial/sender (sitting on the top of the tank) as well as the dial sending a signal to the helm gauge. What is interesting is that the arm in the tank sends a magnetic signal through the cup to the dial where the dial then send that signal to the helm.
The remaining system is the wiring and helm dials.
I determined that the helm gauges were not the problem (tested the leads at the helm gauges) which left either the arm or the dial (or both).
Here's the kicker - the tanks are on the outboard side of the engines and the top of the tank is 4.5 inched below the underside of the deck.... Talk about hard to reach and hard to work on!
I called Rochester and spoke to them at length. They said that most likely, it was the dial, not the arm that was faulty. They told me to remove the old dial and put a magnet to the back of it, then measure the ohms of the leads. Removing the old dials was difficult. There was no room to work, if I had both hands at the dial, I couldn't lift my head to see (no head room) and the old screws were stuck. One of the screw head broke off leaving the threaded shaft part still in the hole. There was some classic boat language uttered that day!!!! After removing them, I found no ohm reading. Here is a pic of my old dial after I removed it...
After getting the old dials out, I discovered corrosion in the cups so I wire brushed the tops as clean as possible before installing the new dial/sender. I also replaced the wire end connectors as they didn't look very good (another simple task made extremely difficult because of the very limited access).
I had to be very careful when screwing down the new dials as the tabs are plastic and could easily break if over tightened (see 2nd picture). On the flip side, the dial had to fit securely down to the cup and not move around.
I held my breath after installing the first one but it actually worked! The second one was the same as the first except it had the old screw left in the hole so I JB Welded the tab into place.
I caulked the joint around the dials so dust and dirt would get in to the cup.
4 Days, cuts and scrapes and some foul words later and my boat is whole again.
Randy
My boat is a 1995, the fuel tanks were made by Florida Marine Tanks and the gauges were made by Rochester Gauges. The set up is as follows....
There is a gauge with a float arm inside the tank. it is bolted down to the top of the tank and is completely sealed.
There is a "cup" on top of the gauge. A dial/sending unit sits in the cup and is held down with 2 machine screws..
My particular boat has what is called twin site dials where you can see the amount of fuel in the tank by looking directly at the dial/sender (sitting on the top of the tank) as well as the dial sending a signal to the helm gauge. What is interesting is that the arm in the tank sends a magnetic signal through the cup to the dial where the dial then send that signal to the helm.
The remaining system is the wiring and helm dials.
I determined that the helm gauges were not the problem (tested the leads at the helm gauges) which left either the arm or the dial (or both).
Here's the kicker - the tanks are on the outboard side of the engines and the top of the tank is 4.5 inched below the underside of the deck.... Talk about hard to reach and hard to work on!
I called Rochester and spoke to them at length. They said that most likely, it was the dial, not the arm that was faulty. They told me to remove the old dial and put a magnet to the back of it, then measure the ohms of the leads. Removing the old dials was difficult. There was no room to work, if I had both hands at the dial, I couldn't lift my head to see (no head room) and the old screws were stuck. One of the screw head broke off leaving the threaded shaft part still in the hole. There was some classic boat language uttered that day!!!! After removing them, I found no ohm reading. Here is a pic of my old dial after I removed it...
After getting the old dials out, I discovered corrosion in the cups so I wire brushed the tops as clean as possible before installing the new dial/sender. I also replaced the wire end connectors as they didn't look very good (another simple task made extremely difficult because of the very limited access).
I had to be very careful when screwing down the new dials as the tabs are plastic and could easily break if over tightened (see 2nd picture). On the flip side, the dial had to fit securely down to the cup and not move around.
I held my breath after installing the first one but it actually worked! The second one was the same as the first except it had the old screw left in the hole so I JB Welded the tab into place.
I caulked the joint around the dials so dust and dirt would get in to the cup.
4 Days, cuts and scrapes and some foul words later and my boat is whole again.
Randy
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