Packard Forum Index » Post-War (1946-54)

With the limited availability of good 22-23 senders, if someone bought a unit and then upon receipt found it not to be the correct sender for his car I am curious what it would take to modify senders so a 17 gal sender could be used in place of a 20 gallon and vise versa.

The tank depth would seem to be the obvious difference in capacity but I don't know that for fact.

This is a 17 gallon sender with the capacity stamped on the gauge flange. If someone has a 20 gallon unit in decent enough shape to compare measurements or note any other differences, I would be curious how the length of the arms or angle of the bend or limits of the swing might differ. I am thinking everything past the crimp which joins the two piece of wire making the float arm assy might be the difference and changing the length of the long arm would allow the swap.

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Wow! Now I know why I have trouble with my fuel gage on my 1950 Packard. Here is a wonderful example of a solution looking for a problem. Does anyone know why Packard needed to reinvent the fuel gage and sender?

On my 1950 Packard the fuel gage decided to stop working so I did the sure-fire solution. I sent my sending unit away to one of the usual Packard parts sources and got it back totally rebuilt. I hired a local electrical repair shop that has a great reputation to install the sending unit. They dropped the tank, had it cleaned and leak tested and put in the new sending unit. During this they found a bad wire and fixed that too.

Everything worked well as expected for about a year. On a short trip to a local show the Packard died. The gage was reading 3/4 full so I did not suspect running out of gas. I had it towed home. At home I found the car would run fine if I put gas in it. I took it to a station and filled it up, but the gage read the same. I started using the odometer to refuel the car and closely watched the gage. One day the gage decided to read full, right after I did fill the tank. Next time I drove it the gage went back to 3/4 full reading, but this was obviously wrong because the tank was full.

Now that I can see the details of how the sending unit works I see the solution is not simple. Does anyone have a good suggestion? I will not worry what the cost is because I already have many hundreds of dollars in this 'fix'. I just want the car reliable. If I replace the sender again does anyone have advice on the best place to get another one?

Someone in Hemmings advertises to fix these things cannot remember the name-took 2x but got it fixed. If cannot find the name let me know and I will find it

AFAIK, repairing is about the best option at present. Don't know if our vendors have any NOS or rebuilts to offer people with non repairable units. I know one poster sent his sender in for repair and it was returned as non repairable because so much had rusted away. He has come up with a possible answer but don't believe it is completely proven yet. Not sure of the condition Elefant found but believe he is looking for another unit too. With the base just ordinary steel I suspect the rust is a common problem.

According to Motors Manual Ford and King Seeley must have had similar if not identical units. Whether any comparable Ford vintage senders could be made to interchange is unknown but with there being many more Ford cars and vendors perhaps there is a possibility someone in the Ford world has a repro or has found a solution.

Assuming a K-S sending unit is repairable, he's a source folks have been using for many years.

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the 65 Mutang bras-float fits nicely and I will fix it with an aditional bras-stripe... then my only hope is that it will wake up the electrical funktion when operating up and down in fuel.. getting a replacement struggeld with money transfer problems.

the test will soon begin, today I recived my chemical cleaned out gastank and it looks very nice.

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That sure is one pretty tank!
Wes