Hi folks, I write hopefully in case someone can help or point me to someone who can.  My fuel gauge has been acting up sometime now and I'm completely fed up with it.  You put fuel in for example I put £20 worth of diesel had about 50miles left before this.  Drive home restart car in morning.  Fuel gauge alarm goes off needle drops to nothing, MPG computer telling me range says nothing or less than what it should, fuel gauge goes back to where it should sometimes whole thing over again.  I have videoed this in case anybody wants to view the issue for themselves.  I have noticed the MPG is bad I mean setting off takes a good while for average MPG to go from 30s to 40s which it never did.  Car always set off around 40s and went into 50s.  I think car using more fuel than it should regardless of the flippin fuel gauge issue.  Its so annoying.  I did check oil,  Garage did oil change sometime ago, it has been overfilled but not by stupid amounts, whether it was correct oil which I insisted it was.  PLEASE HELP SOMEBODY.  I'm just about to sell car coz I'm so sick of fuel alarms and not being able to get a decent MPG anymore.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXv7DlBZwec&ab_channel=SpeedyPaul

It could be a dry solder joint inside the instrument cluster. Or it could be the sender unit which is mounted on the fuel pump and accessed under the back seat (driver side).

 

The clusters are known for developing dry solder joints and are pretty easy to remove, dismantle, and reflow the solder.

 

Cluster repair video (for immobiliser but same procedure to access joints)....

 

 

 

 

 

Fuel sender video....

 

 

 

Edited 7 February, 20215 yr by TMB

thanks very much watched the second video as the fuel guage on that was doing exactly what mine is.  can i ask if sender unit at fault could it also affect mpg or does it just fix the fuel gauge issue on the dash.  many thanks.  honestly saved that video.   

if it does can you explain how it does so?  thanks.

6 minutes ago, Paul92827 said:

can i ask if sender unit at fault could it also affect mpg or does it just fix the fuel gauge issue on the dash. 

 

Doesn't affect MPG at all. You might have a separate issue there.

 

6 minutes ago, Paul92827 said:

many thanks.  honestly saved that video.   

 

No probs at all

 

Edited 7 February, 20215 yr by TMB

PS I've a VW garage around the corner.  Would you expect they could do this for me and roughly what would be the cost.  I'm just not a mechanic and when I talk of the problem to my own garage they look stumped as i don't think its coming up as a fault on the computer.  Car had abs fault which they identified using this gizmo and i know he never mentioned any other faults shown on their machine.  Also if pump sounding ok i assume it must be sender unit.  Is it quite common on these car has 100k on it?

mpg ah ok, just said at start of video mpg issue, this might help also.

3 minutes ago, Paul92827 said:

PS I've a VW garage around the corner.  Would you expect they could do this for me and roughly what would be the cost.  I'm just not a mechanic and when I talk of the problem to my own garage they look stumped as i don't think its coming up as a fault on the computer. 

 

I honestly don't know what the cost would be as I don't use garages as I do all my own stuff. Faults like the sender unit resistance track being worn won't necessarily come up as a fault code.

 

6 minutes ago, Paul92827 said:

Also if pump sounding ok i assume it must be sender unit.  Is it quite common on these car has 100k on it?

 

We've had faulty sender units on this forum quite a few times.