G.T. Fieros

Any chance these two items are related? I noticed them last weekend.

Issue 1 - filling with gas has became a pain in the ass.... Pump is clicking off every few seconds wheter pumping in fast or trickling it in. Tried 2 different pumps at one station and another pump at another station with the same results.

Issue 2 - Gauge is reading full all the time. Was working fine until last weekend, then I noticed I had 300kms on the tank and it was reading half full. I knew that couldn't be right and went to fill up. After refilling the gauge has been un-relaible. That was the first time I had trouble filling it too - took about 10 minutes to get 20 something litres into it.

Whether it's coincidence or not I popped the hood the first time I filled up and found the line that went from the charcoal cannister to the throttle body to be disconnected at the throttle body. I re-connected it hoping it would somehow resolve both issues but there was no change.

Probably the vent line somehow for the filling and the sender for the gauge right?

Actually - now that I think about it there were no issue before I did my struts and got my alignment. I believe these were my first two times putting gas in it since I did the rear end work and had the alignment done. That must be a coincidence though - I can't see how that could be related.

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Ryan - 86 GT

I've always had the filling problem with my Fiero. The only way to get gas into it is to pull the filler tube back a couple of inches and hold it up. If I let it go in all the way it shuts off immediately.

As for the gauge problem, that one sounds a bit odd, but there is a chance you've loosened up something when you did the struts so the unit isn't connected properly or at all. Those gauges will do strange things when they're not connected, just look at your tach when the car is off.

Yes, that's how I've filled mine in the past as well. However even trying it with barely just the tip of the nozzle into the filler tube and filling at a snail's pace it was still tripping the handle every few seconds. Next time I'll try another station again, I guess it's remotely possible that I got 3 overly sensitive pumps in a row. Before I was able to hold the fuel filler pump at about half throttle with it a couple of inches shy of being fully insterted into the filler and I could go non-stop to the first click, add a little more slowly after that and at the next click it was full. I can't do that any more.

Right now at least I know my trip meter is working - My consumption is still right around 10l/100 so as long as that keeps working I can guestimate what I have left.

The only thing I had done relatively recently was my alignment after the struts and fixing that front valve cover again (a couple of weeks before the alignment. To do that I removed the rear deck lid and disconnected that wiring, but that's all working without any issues.

I think I found the 3 wire connector for the fuel sending unit attached to the firewall under the centre of the rear window. I'm going to try to run the car a bit more to use up some gas and take a reading with the volt meter to see what it says - I currently have about 60 ish kms on it since I last filled it, which was about 130 kms since my last fill the weekend before last.

I've read the gauge reads from 0-90ohms where 90 is full and 0 is empty. Does that mean I can ground the wire to the gauge when I disconnect it at the firewall to make sure the gauge is not faulty? I'm thinking if I ground it the gauge should see 0 ohms, or close to it, and it should show E.

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Ryan - 86 GT

Finally got to give the car a little attention over the weekend. Got to do a lot of little things that I had wanted to get done for a while.

I did some trouble-shooting on the sender and gauge. With the harness disconnected the gauge went passed full - way passed full. Like so far that it couldn't go any further. This was much further than where mine had gone to - but it's behaviour was as expected. Ground tested out ok and with the sender wire shorted to ground it went right down to empty - so it seems that the car wiring and gauge are fine.

At this point my car had 170km on the trip meter (which should be about 1/2 tank) and I was reading 65 ohms resistance on the sender. That's about 2/3 full on the 0-90 scale which my gauge was showing, maybe a tad higher. I thought that it should be reading a bit lower though.

I cleaned the connectors and put it back together and read that someone had got their sender to work again after letting it sit with seafoam in the tank. I happened to have a bottle on my shelf so I dumped her in and filled it up - It filled fine this time until about 9 or 10L. I squeezed another one in then stopped because I dind't know if I was going to over fill it or not. What's strange is that 10 l corresponds to filling the tank about 1/3 but that still doesn't match the mileage on the trip meter.

This tank I will be running right down to ~300 kms to see what happens with the gauge. I'm not sure whether I have a problem now, or if I just drive the car so few and far between and I'm all of a sudden getting great mileage. I'm still skeptical though, I have to run this one down and see what happens.

On the happy side the other things I got to do:
- Adjusted the reverse lock-out bumper on the shifter. Now my reverse lights stay on without having to hold my hand on the shifter to keep it left. It actually feels like it tightened up the whole shifter.
- Installed an auto-dimming mirror I had in my spare car parts pile for a couple of years. (a year or two ago I went to the scrap yard and pulled 6 or 7 of them). Works awesome after a few tests with the multi-meter wiring was dead simple. Functions 100% with the reverse light dim disable. I used the ground for the map lights and picked up both +12v ignition and the reverse lights at the reverse light switch (which is now working properly).
- Fixed the cigarette lighter, I hope.... Haven't tested with an actual 12v charger yet.
- Checked the gas filler and vent lines for obstruction, tank for dents / etc - all appears to be clear.
- Changed the air filter on the charcoal cannister - had it and never put it in for some reason. I found it looking for my mirror to put in lol.
- Bled the clutch line again. Miraculously my pedal came back. I really need to get that master and slave from Rodney. - likely a winter project at this point.
- Added a massive ground (I think 0 gauge) from my old stereo spare parts bin between the engine block and the negative battery terminal. This was free because I had it around and it happened to be the perfect length and already wrapped in the plastic tubing. I have a bunch more 8 gauge cable from a previous installation, I just need some more cable ends to add another one (or 2 for that matter) from the block to the chassis. I used the bolt under the egr solenoid as a few on PFF had used - I would like to add one from there to chassis ground as well and maybe one on the other side of the engine.
- Lastly she got a wash and a vacuum.

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Ryan - 86 GT