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Quote:

Yes.it is attached to the bolt for the inner rear battery box support bar and is shown that way in the 1937 shop manual.

Ok, busy day here in the garage. First, I had to take ten gals of stale fuel to the local Hazardous Waste Drop-Off location to get rid of it. With that gone, and now I had two empty 5 gal cans, was able to siphon the last two gallons out of the tank.

Then I was able to drop the tank and get the sender out.

The sender had two issues. One, the coak float was completely fuel soaked. I wondered why the sender felt so heavy. I literally could squeeze fuel out of the float. What is a source for a plastic float to replace this style of float? It has a rod through the center and measures 3" long with a diameter of 1-1/4".

The send issue was inside the sender itself. I had to drill out the rivets that hold the two haves together. Once apart, beside being filthy inside, I found the issue.

There is a floating spring loaded cap that ride on the internal float arm. That spring loaded cap presses against the resitor wire.

The cap was junked up and stuck to the rod and also the spring had pretty much lost its tension.

So I unjunked everything, and stretched the spring out. Then it all appeared to work.

Based on the info Howard posted above, 37 models use A.C. Gauges.

When the float range, I am getting ~4ohms empty and ~35ohms full.

When hooked up to the dash gauge that sweeps from nearly empty to full. I was only using alligator clips to test all this, so perhaps once everything is bolted in place, those ranges with be closer to 0 (empty) and 30 (full). This corresponds to Howard's chart above that pre-1965 GM gauges are 0-30. This appears to follow that.

Nowhere in any of the Packard manuals does it list the ohm range. But this swept through the gauge as expected.

Now I just need to replace the float, and I should be good to go on that front.

Any sources for his style float in plastic?

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Kev,

I have used late model (well, late model for me ) floats. The picture below shows some late model floats -- one is from my '93 Jeep Grand Cherokee that I had to swap the fuel pump (which includes the sender/float) out on, and the other is one of a handful that I got from free from a friend that runs a auto repair. The sender is from my '64 Studebaker.

If you know a local auto repair show, they will probably give you as many floats as you need.

Cut or grind the very end of the wire on your sender, remove the old float and install the new float and the small metal washer, then use a vise to flatten (smash) the end of the wire so the float stays on.

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Those are for sure an option.

I also found this is pretty close. I would need to use two of them.

https://cwmoss.com/products/gas-gauge-floats-1928-31

Ranger Boat Fuel Sender Float | 2 1/2 X 1 1/4 Inch Black Foam
$5.30
eBay
Get it by 5/5

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Two of these would get the exact dimension as your old one.

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Thanks everyone!

I did a little more tweaking on the fuel sender as I was getting 5ohm to 38ohm and still the reading was a little jumpy. Sometimes just up over a 1000ohms momentarily. The 5ohm was enough to make never go alway the way to empty.

Found the issue on the end of wound resistor wire, there is a super small peened over nub that is part of the end of the terminal stud. The peened over area was completely worn away which causes the resistor wire be loose or barely make contact with the terminal stud. So what to do?

So I replaced the terminal stuff with a bolt. Now end of the resistor wire is now wedged between the head of the bolt and the insulator.

Put it back together and now the ohm range reads 1 to 30. Which fully spans between E and F when hooked to the guage.

I can live with that. If it fails in a couple of years down the road, then I will deal with it then. But for now, it works.

Good to know the resistance. I updated the chart to indicate 37 and hopefully the same range is used for other years around that time.

You still need the floats? I think I saved my plastic ones after I did the efi sender… just have to find what box I dropped them in.