PursuitSpecial
Well-Known Member
The fuel gauge has been acting up in my gran fury, it will stop working for a while and I took the gauge bezel off and wiggle it around and it goes to working again. Recently it stopped working altogether, I measured the continuity and there is none. I ordered a cluster out of a Newport on eBay for backup gauges, but being the experimental type I decided to try and fix the old one. I drilled out the rivets that hold the needle assembly onto the faceplate and carefully removed it, and it turned out that the factory GLUED the heater wire for the thermostatic gauge to the contacts and the heat from the gauge itself melted the glue over 43 years and it turned loose. Oddly enough keeping a full tank of gas accelerates the glue turning loose because it keeps the wire hot, in fact it scorched the paint on the back of the faceplate. I scraped the glue off and soldered the wires to the contacts, put a dab of solder on the plug in stud contacts to improve the connection with the cluster, then drilled the mounting holes out a little so I could reassemble the gauge with 6-32 screws. Looks odd but it works fine again. This particular gauge is used in R and J bodies but I suspect M bodies probably use the same system.
