My 96 Blazer never reaches E when it runs out of gas. When I first bought the truck about 2 years ago, it would be just to the right of E when it would run out of gas and catch me off gaurd. Now, it runs out of gas at about 1/4 tank reading and it's getting worse. I run out of gas all the time since the gauge bounces around depending on if you are at idle or driving. [:@]

It's annoying and I'm wondering can I just move the needle to the left to what it should be or will that screw something up? What can I do to fix it that won't cost me a small fortune?

Thanx in advance for any help.

 

well the best thing to do is probably replace the sending unit in the tank if that's what it is... might wanna confirm that first though... but if you're hell bent on using what's there.. you can change the impedance coming from the sending unit some with a resistor but you'd have to findout if the guage has a posative coefficient of negative coefficient.. what I mean by that is.... does the resistance go up when it's full or is the resistance low when it's full and you can tell this with a meter.... run down the wires underneath the vehicle and tap into them with a meter and measure them prefferably when it's low... then go fill it up... measure it again... if you do that and tell me what the 2 readings are then I can prolly get ya in the ballpark of how to correct the problem pretty easy... BUT if it's gettin' farther and farther away from the E when you're runnin' out of fuel.. I'd be willing to bet the sending unit (float) is goin' bad

 

Thats what it sounds like to me. has a fuel pump ever been done on this truck that you know of? is it possible that it got bent? my sending unit on another car got damaged by a so called mechanic when he was replacing the fuel pump... not fun at all. i wound up having to get another sending unit.

 

I had the fuel pump replaced about a year and a half ago. I will have the sending unit checked. It's just annoying that the gauge reads like it has half a tank one second, and a quarter tank the next. The oil gauge is the same way, it reads fine when I'm moving and drops low when in idle.

Thanks for the tips guys. I'm not really much of a mechanic so I'll leave the testing and replacing to the pros.

Eric