illumined

For some reason, maybe I'm just paying more attention to it, the gas gauge becomes more inaccurate as I use the gas in the tank, especially when it gets down to about 1/4. On level ground it is accurate, but on a hill or during medium-hardish braking and acceleration it will show there is more or less gas than there is. It seems to be the gas sloshing around, I can't actually hear it but that's my current best guess. My question is this a design issue in the '88 model year or is something wearing out/broken?

rocketraider

Actually more common than you'd think. The tanks have baffles in them to keep fuel slosh to a minimum, but they'll still do it. You could have a grounding issue on the tank level sender unit, but that usually shows up as stuck on either full or empty. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Run a gas mileage check on your 88 to determine average gas mileage. That will give you a baseline to go by. Ex you have an 18 gallon tank and the car gets 20 mpg, you have 360 mile range. So even if the gauge is going wonky, you'd know roughly how far you can travel before you need gas.

Unless you're just jonesing to drop that fuel tank...

oldcutlass

They all do it, I worry when mine stops moving.

JohnnyBs68S

All of the old-school style gas gauges do this, very non-linear reporting of the fuel level. As long as I've known my '68 (since '74), the gauge stayed at "F" for quite awhile, then starts dropping at ~3/4 tank, and moves alot when it gets near "E".

Indeed. Or when it points to the ALT lamp (way past "F"). After a few years in storage, mine would occasionally point to the right, way past the "F" mark. I knew the sender went AWOL for a while, then later it would read normally (between "E" and "F"). I think that after sitting for so long in one spot, the contacts on the sender wiper got dirty and would occasionally lose contact w/ the resistive element resulting the the gauge reading off the scale way to high. Once this resutled in me running out of gas (calling it too close w/ the MPG and ODO method). After a few tanks through the system to "scrub" the sender's contacts, it seems to be working much more reliably now.

illumined

Nope, I'm looking to keep the parts original until they stop working.


Anyway, thanks for the advice guys. I just knew I had come to the right place for questions like this.

EDIT: I'm new to car ownership and newer to things peculiar to older designs, so most of the questions I ask on this site are likely going to be things like this.