DavidMyers53

I finally got my '83 Limited Edition on the road last week. It had been sitting for 13 years before I bought it! When I only had 1-2 gallons of fuel in the tank, the gauge registered. When I put more in it, it stopped. In addition, the tach worked intermittantly, sometimes stopping around 3,500 RPM and sometimes appearing to work correctly, and then it stopped working altogether. Other instruments seem to work okay. Could these problems be related? Any suggestions?

Thanks for any help!

Rx-7Doctor

iTrader: (13)

The fuel gauge is not related to the tach. Check to see if you are getting fire out of the trailing plugs, if not then the ignitor is gone, that's why the tach would not work. Also on the gauge, pull and check the sending unit in the tank.

DavidMyers53

I replaced the trailing ignitor with the leading ignitor and converted the leading ignitor to GM (Sorenson EL102). Car cranks and runs fine and I have leading and trailing spark. Tach works all the time, but only registers up to 2500-3000 PM. Any suggestions?

Also, the car went dead the other day after driving 3-4 miles. After 5 minutes, it cranked and I got it home. I checked the fuel pump and no gas was coming out. I replaced the fuel pump and filter and now have gas to the carburetor. I drove it 3-4 miles and it cut off. After 5 minutes, it cranked. Any suggestions?

Thanks - David

trochoid

iTrader: (6)

If the pump and filter are good, fuel tank may be crudded up, plugging the pickup tube inside the tank, or you might have a pinhole leak in either the hard or soft pickup line.

Sounds like a restriction from rust particles are working thier way up the pickup tube, plugging, then falling back into the tank for another cycle. I've dealt with that before and it was frustrating until I figured out what was happening. In my case, I was pluggin fuel filters in less than 1/2 mile of driving too.

T_Racer

iTrader: (1)

Yeah, What Trochoid said. I too had the same two problems, tach and fuel gauge. As with anything electrical, check connections first. Both at the gauge cluster and at the sending unit/trailing ignition. Also, I was eating fuel filters in about 3-4 days. took the tank out and major rust. while getting another tank, swapped the sending unit out and the resistor strip on it good. Very careful here, some small stuff to easily be too rough with, but works good now. My tach issue was a bad tach unit, which was fixed with a used gauge cluster, swapped out just the tach, so mileage stayed true, and good to go. Hope this helps.

Travis

Kentetsu

If the engine dies when the tach goes haywire, then those two are related. The fuel pump (on some years anyway) will not run unless it gets confirmation that the trailing ignitor is firing. I had this issue a few weeks ago, and it turned out that my ignitor plug was loose. Easy fix for me.