For a quick check of the gauge, go to the sender unit and disconnect the wire there; use a jumper wire to connect it to "ground" (i.e., the body or frame structure. Turn on the ignition . . . the gauge should swing over to read Full (or a bit beyond).

Paul Schuster in PA has replacement sending units.

Jason,

You don't even need to disconnect the wire from the terminal of the sender. Just ground it, as Park said.

Per

Basically I have the same problem. 12 volts. Bought and installed the Dennis Carpenter voltage reducer/reg. but never taken a voltage reading on the gas gage.
When ign. is turned on, the gage needle goes to about 1/4; when ign. is turned off, it goes to beyond full. Been that way since I bought car about a year ago.
When the sender is grounded, per above, there is NO difference; like it wasn't grounded at all. Tank is approx. 3/4 full of gas. The resistance of the sender unit to ground is now 1.6-1.8 ohms{Fluke dig. meter}. Believe this reading is low?
Note that I have not let the tank get too low since I ran out of gas once already this past summer. Been wanting to check the resistance readings as the tank level goes down but haven't yet. Also, I want to check the voltage going to the gas gage and see if it is around 3-4 volts.
I will get around to this soon but wondered from what I have said, would anyone offer a comment.
The stock temp. gage is inoperative since I have aftermarket gage and haven't relocated the stock sensor to the thermo. housing with a new tapped hole for the temp sender, that I will do. Tks for any comment.

Richard, the output of the Carpenter VR should be about 5v. As for voltage readings at the tank, they would be meaningless. You'd need to remove the sending unit to check whether its resistance is in the right range. I have one of the sending units from Paul Schuster and it works well, but one has to spend a little time playing with float arm position. I ran the fuel down to the half full level, then calibrated the sender to read a bit lower than half.

When working with a non-performing gas gauge, it's always good to check and ensure the tank is grounded to the frame. If in doubt, run a jumper wire to ground from one of the screws on the sending unit flange.

R
esistance of the sender at the tank is what I was reading (to ground); assume it goes up and down based on level.

Hello,
Well... I got my fuel gauge to move today. 🙂
What I am wondering is if I need to feed this gauge with 6 volt or 12 volt.
The car is converted to 12 volt. Is there a regulator on the back side of the fuel and heat gauge?

Thank you.

Jason, how did you get it to move??

Hello,
I traced all the wires and discovered I had a wiring issue.

[quote="Jason Jellis" post=9916]Hello,
Well... I got my fuel gauge to move today. 🙂
What I am wondering is if I need to feed this gauge with 6 volt or 12 volt.
The car is converted to 12 volt. Is there a regulator on the back side of the fuel and heat gauge?

Thank you.
Yes, the 51 thru 54 Stepdowns have the constant 5.5 volt regulator on the back of the gauge. I have run 12v through the one in my '53 Hornet for 29 years, and no failure. I do keep one spare on hand just in case.

I changed my 52 Hudson to 12volt no resistor had to ground one of the screws works ok

YOUR FUEL GAUDGE MEASURES OHMS NOT VOLTAGE I MAKE AND SELL NEW FUEL TANK SENDING UNITS THEY WORK WITH ANY 12 OR 6 VOLTAGE I HAVE SOLD MANY OF THEM OVER THE PAST 11 YEARS

Hello again,
Does anyone know how may amps a 12 volt to 6 volt reducer should be to run my fuel gauge on my 53 Hornet?
The one I found is a 2 amp. Is this too much?

Thanks. Jason

Jason,

If the reducer you found produces 6 volts, up to 8 volts when nothing is attached to it (apply 12 volts to it and measure the output with a voltmeter), then it will work fine, since the current that is used by the gauge is less than 2 amps. (When a six volt car is idling, the voltage is around 6 volts. When the engine is running faster than idling, the voltage gets up to around 8 volts, so the regulator on the gauge that has an output of 5 volts is designed to take any voltage from 8 volts down to 5 volts and supply 5 volts to the gauge.)

Per

Jason, the answer here depends on what kind of device the "12 volt to 6 volt reducer" is. If it's an electronic regulator with a 5 volt output, it should work fine. But if it's merely a resistance unit, it will drop the voltage from 12 to 6 only if there's 2 amps flowing through it. If the gauges draw less than 2 amps, a resistor unit isn't going to reduce the voltage to the desired 5 volts.