Re: lights

["Jim Reeve" <ultra@xxxx>]

Long post ahead, but very insightfull for some.

BTW Ryan, my low fuel light does not come on at startup. Nor has it 
in any of the other 9 cars I've ridden in.

Remember, the fuel sender is posistioned in the very front center of 
the gas tank. This means that anytime your going up a hill or 
accelerating, the fuel guage will drop for the moment. Last year, my 
speedometer was dead, so I was going by the gas gauge to know when to 
fill up, not by mileage driven. I often filled up when the needle 
showed 1/8th a tank. The average fill here was about 8 or 9 gallons. 
Fast forward to this year, and some of you will remember I had my 
entire binnacle taken apart about as much as it could be, which meant 
even the individual gauges were dismantled. This was for my 
backlighting project, which I am still working on. I had every needle 
removed from every gauge. There is no way to tell if the needle shaft 
had moved since the needle had been removed, so I had to come up with 
a way of making sure I could get the needles back on proporly. What I 
had done, was hot-wired the proper pins on the gauges using the help 
of the wiring diagram and the printed circuit on the back of the 
cluster. I was then able to force the shafts to a consistent 
position, and reattached the needles. However, after I had put the 
needles back on, I did "bump" them a few times. Since there was no 
longer 20 years of friction built up connecting the needles on the 
shaft, some of them slipped. So now my gas gauge points strait up 
when I have a full tank. It looks like I have a faulty sender, but it 
is really not the case. This means that since the 4/4 and 0 marks are 
90 degrees apart, then the 1/2 peg on mine would be 0, for an empty 
tank. So now, even though I'm driving knowing I have very little gas 
left, I have not been paraniod and intimidated by the 0 mark. This 
has resulted in my discovery, that the needle on my unit drops at a 
very constant rate down to right about 0, (or in my case 1/2). It 
then holds there for a long while unchanged. It then will start to 
drop more, at about the same rate as it did with the full tank. Then 
about 1/8 below that (below 0, or in my case 1/2), my low fuel light 
will flicker. THEN I fill up with gas, and top it up to about 10.8 
gallons. (Never have reached 11). The DeLorean has a 13.3 gallon 
tank, but remember that once the fuel gets to a certain point, it will 
no longer be usable as there is also air being sucked into the fuel 
pump. This is how I came up with the 2.5 gallon mark, and 20-40 miles 
left, based upon 15mpg to 30mpg between some cars, still giving some 
to spare. I currently feel confident driving untill my fuel light 
comes on, and even then I know I can still go a little further if 
absolutely neccessary. I dont know what the possible difference is 
between the cars, since the later cars supposedly we had the exact 
same sender, but I do have a theory. It seems by other posts that the 
most common problem inside the OEM sender is corroded contacts. It is 
entirely possible, that the contacts for the light were dirty, and 
never had a strong enough connection to actually turn on the light, 
untill all gas was gone and the float was heavy enought to trigger it. 
Keep in mind that I have never actually seen the inside of a sender 
since I've had no problems with mine, so I'm only guessing. And heck, 
I dont even know any history of my car before I got it, so I may not 
even have an original sender. (But I do know that I dont have 
tankzilla).

I hope to see some of you at Houston, and although I wont have any 
prototypes of my backlit dash availible, I hope to have my new custom 
overhead console ready and installed for everyone to see. Any other 
comments or questions are encouraged! Later everyone.

(One last note...
Today, I installed a new cycling switch in my accumulator, scooped out 
3 handfulls of crud from the evaporator, vaccumed out the condensor, 
and managed to unglog my clogged AC water drain. The result, some 
dang cold AC! I got fog forming on the outside of my door windows! 
Houston and Knoxville are gonna be mighty cold come August.)

Jim Reeve
MNDMC - Minnesota DeLorean Club
DMC-6960

--- In dmcnews@xxxx, theshovel1224@xxxx wrote:
> That's interesting, Jim. I now have tankzilla installed, because my
> old fuel sender would point straight up occasionally. When I still
> had my original sender installed, I remember I had very low fuel,
> less than 1/4 tank, and I drove up a steep hill & the fuel gauge
> dropped to empty & only then did the low fuel light flicker. I have
> also read somewhere, maybe in the archives, about different
> experiences with the low fuel light & one said that the low fuel 
light
> came on when the gauge hit empty, & he ran out of gas 30 seconds
> later. According to service bulletein ST-28-11/81 a different fuel
> sender was introduced at vin 5238. Both you & I would have this
> type of fuel sender, (my vin is 16822) so that wouldn't be what is
> causing the discrepancy. Any ideas?
> 
> John Yeoman
> 
> --- In dmcnews@xxxx, "Jim Reeve" <ultra@xxxx> wrote:
> > I agree with everything John said, but I have one comment to add. 
> > On my OEM fuel sender (which works perfectly I might add), my
> > low fuel light comes on at exactly 2.5 gallons remaining.