Fuel Gauge reading

[bobm3142]

I have just watched a great little video on YouTube (evo Diaries) on a Sprint. This sprint suffers with the same fuel level indications I had. My S3 had exactly the same symptons and was totally cleard by getting rid of poor earting. Since the symptons were the same I thought I'd have a play to see if I could track down the root cause of the problem. The sender unit connections are in the boot and readily accessible so I had already cleaned those (including the earting point in the chassis); this is very easy to do and worth doing anyway. However, the actual cause turned out to be the earth connection on the dash board. If the earth wire connection, on the rear of the speedo (Held on one of the clamping brackets/retaining straps by a knurled nut) is poor then the gauge reading is poor (may read full when tank is full but empty when the tank is still at least half full and anywhere inbetween for other levels). The previous owner had given up with the gauge reading and just filled up every 250 miles. A Lotus dealer looked into it (?) and told me "some clown had probably fitted the wrong sender unit". Simply tightening the knurled nut (by hand) is all that was needed (on my car) but cleaning the surfaces too is a good idea. If anyone else's Elan has the same symptons then it is worth just reaching behind the speedo and tightening the knurled nuts on the retaining straps; costs nothing but a few seconds and may solve the problem.

Bob