Fuel gauge suggestions

[Mike Freauf]

Greetings all, my 424 is the cutter setup.

I currently don’t have a working fuel gauge, can anyone suggest an easy fix for this problem, as the peep hole gauge is not repairable.

[Bryan Bywalec]

What is your use case? Day sailing? Long distance? Occasional weekend runs? The cheapest solution is to keep track of engine hours and be conservative. This is how we did it for a long time. The primary danger of this setup is when filling as you could overfill and burp fuel into the water.

The next step is a mechanical gauge but that requires the peep glass window to work.

After that you are looking at an electrical sender. There are some that work with the existing magnetic sender. This is probably the easiest as it doesn’t require removing the existing sender in the tank. Something like the Moeller 035760-10. You’ll also need a fuel gauge to monitor the sender.

You could also replace the existing unit (who knows what condition it is in…) with a varity of senders. The Moeller reed units are popular:

9″ tank depth – Moeller part # moe-035761-10
11″ tank depth – Moeller part # moe-035762-10
13″ tank depth – Moeller part # moe-035764-10
15″ tank depth – Moeller part # moe-035765-10
18-1/2″ tank depth – Moeller part # moe-035767-10

I should know the tank depth off the top of my head but best the check yours own. Sender length is 1″ shorter than tank depth.

You’ll still need a gauge (33-240 Ohm’s).

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Bryan Bywalec
S/V Pelican, Hull 209
Siren Engineering, LLC

1 user thanked author for this post.

Mike Freauf

[Mike Freauf]

Thanks guys for all the help. Job done.

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[Mike Freauf]

Cheers. That was very helpful. I am a long distance cruiser. Currently that is how we keep track of fuel is using engine hours on our 300 litre fuel tank. However, previous owner had installed an extra fuel bladder under the masters bunk….so when transferring fuel to main tank, this is problematic.

The peep hole…is that a good area to be removed and place sender down into that area to install new unit?

[Mike Freauf]

Also Bryan, do you know if there is a kit available to replace the current peep hole fuel gauge that the 424s have?

[Bryan Bywalec]

How big is the fuel bladder? Interesting setup.

I’ve removed my peep hole a few times and it was relatively painless. If someone got the bright idea of using something like 5200 to seal it, you may have trouble… but in general they seem to come up quite easily. If I was going to change mine that is how I would go about it.

I also have a friend who replaced his glass sight with a inspection port cover so that when he wants to read the fuel he just removes the twist-on inspection port. Another option to consider.

Bryan

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Bryan Bywalec
S/V Pelican, Hull 209
Siren Engineering, LLC

[RichCarter]

As I posted earlier, when I replaced my tank, I had them install a fuel level sender. We put in a vertical sender. The swing-arm type wouldn’t work because it hit against the baffle inside the tank. To change the sender, you need to remove the old gauge and measure the distance from the top of the tank to the bottom where the hole is. Then order a gauge with the correct length. You need to make sure that the hole pattern is the same. You could bring the old gauge to a decent marine store and have them match the pattern.

You also need to buy an electric gauge that matches the resistance of the sender and find a place to mount it. Once you replace the old gauge, you can read the fuel level without getting down on your hands and knees.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Mike Freauf

[Mike Freauf]

Cheers, that is exactly what I will do!

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