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MG MGA - fuel gauge adjustment

my fuel gauge shows full until i have approx 3 gallons (imperial)of fuel left in the tank, after which it steadilly drops to zero. i tend to use the guage as a low fuel warning light.
i think the reason for this is that i have a modern replica sender unit fitted to the tank.( the gauge is an original mga one)
is it worth me trying to adjust the magnets in the gauge to see if this will make the needle move in a more linear fashion or would it be better to leave things alone?
would be most gratefull for any input.
cheers
colyn
c firth

Colyn
I would leave it alone I had problems with my guage reading full all the time -did all the wiring tests as per Barneys site and found that the sender was OK with the correct ohms reading at full & empty so adjusted the magnets and the best I could achieve was it only reads half full when 4 galloms left (it remains on full and only starts moving down when 5 gallons left) then it moves correctly down to empty.
only minute movement of the magnets are required and it took me 3 attempts to achieve the above result.
Paul
P D Camp

Hi,
it took me months of filling the tank right up , then doing some miles then filling up again and adjusting the guage, in the end it was not too bad but still moved all over the place, I never did take any notice of it but I knew by then that the car did 25 mpg and the tank was a 10 gallon one so I just filled up after about 200 miles. ps it helped that my father had done some aircraft instrument training during WW2 and was could keep repairing the wiring in the guage every time I broke it lol


Gordon
g c pugh

I found it really fiddly to calibrate the gauge as per Barneys site; it took me more like 33 attempts. However, I found that the needle could be twisted (probably back to its original position). This allows the empty (or full?) position to be set accurately and finally to get accurate readings accross the gauge.

As Paul says, check that the sender unit has the correct resistance first. If that's OK then the gauge should calibrate fairly accurately, albeit with a bit of fiddling.
Neil McGurk

They must all read incorrectly - mine only goes to half full even when full - when it eventually drops below half I know I have about 2 gallons left. Does anyone out there have one that reads correctly?
Cam Cunningham

Mine seems pretty accurate!
Neil McGurk

This thread was discussed between 18/03/2009 and 19/03/2009

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