The Dispatch | Expert | Scudo Hub

Hi,

I had similar problems with my Scudo (2001). Over many years  the fuel gauge had always been very accurate and the low tank light illuminated correctly, I had many times run down to 'empty' on the gauge without running out of fuel. I did however start to run out of fuel periodically, at times with the gauge showing nearly 1/4 of a tank with the gauge then seeming to regain some accuracy for a while. As I suspected the sender unit I replaced it but the inconsistencies remained, I tried a spare instrument cluster with no improvement in the accuracy either. Then I noticed that the readings on the gauge seemed to be higher in periods of wet weather sometimes increasing by several units without adding fuel, suspecting that the sender unit was being corrupted by water ingress increasing the resistance and therefore the reading shown. I remembered that a couple of years before the gauge started to give problems one of the two wires from the sender unit in the connection in the wiring loom which is fastened to a small bracket on the 'chassis' below the near-side (in the U.K.) sliding door had corroded completely through and stopped the gauge working. I had removed the connection block completely and re-connected the wires together restoring it to working order. Suspecting this might be a clue I re-cut the wires and stripped back some of the insulation where the loom had failed previously to find that the vast majority of the strands of the wire beneath were corroded black, I continued to strip back the insulation and each time found black strands of wire beneath, the quality of the wires didn't improve until I had stripped to within a couple of inches of the sender unit, I also stripped insulation from the wires running forward from the connection block and found the same corrosion, although it wasn't affected so far before improving to copper coloured strands once more. I rewired this section of the loom with new cable of the correct size and it appears that the gauge can be trusted again.