Bill Boyd
Well Known Member
I know I'm not the first person this has bitten - heck, I recall some time in the distant past having to replace one of these in my 6A and what fun that was.
I am calibrating my fuel senders to the Advanced Flight EFIS - very straightforward process: add fuel incrementally and hit "save" to store the value at each selected increment of fuel capacity. The left tank calibration went fine; the right side not so much.
I added five gallons of fuel and determined that the displayed raw data value
(2137) was not changing from the empty tank value. Five gallons more and rocking the wings changed nothing.
Fuel sender wire disconnected and left open: EFIS setup screen showed an AD.VAL of 1. Shorted the wire to ground: AD.VAL of 4094. This is a huge relief as it suggests the wiring is intact, correct, and responsive to resistive inputs. Next, to confirm what I already suspect: wire disconnected from sender terminal, measured resistance of the sender at 0, 5 and 10 gallons in tank: a rock steady 219.4 ohms at all three levels.
So I know I have an inoperative sender. I tried poking around in the drain bung hole with a piece of flexible tubing to see if I could lift the float arm and get a wiggle in the readings but have so far failed. I see a sender replacement in my immediate future (wings on and DAR scheduled for this Saturday) unless the hive has other ideas.
I purchased the kit with tanks already built and mounted on the wings - assume the float senders are Van's standard issue for the era (2010-2011). At this point I'd be willing to angle-drill a hole in the end of the tank and mount a capacitive sender if it were feasible - the EFIS can be configured independently for either type.
Ideas??
I am calibrating my fuel senders to the Advanced Flight EFIS - very straightforward process: add fuel incrementally and hit "save" to store the value at each selected increment of fuel capacity. The left tank calibration went fine; the right side not so much.
I added five gallons of fuel and determined that the displayed raw data value
(2137) was not changing from the empty tank value. Five gallons more and rocking the wings changed nothing.
Fuel sender wire disconnected and left open: EFIS setup screen showed an AD.VAL of 1. Shorted the wire to ground: AD.VAL of 4094. This is a huge relief as it suggests the wiring is intact, correct, and responsive to resistive inputs. Next, to confirm what I already suspect: wire disconnected from sender terminal, measured resistance of the sender at 0, 5 and 10 gallons in tank: a rock steady 219.4 ohms at all three levels.
So I know I have an inoperative sender. I tried poking around in the drain bung hole with a piece of flexible tubing to see if I could lift the float arm and get a wiggle in the readings but have so far failed. I see a sender replacement in my immediate future (wings on and DAR scheduled for this Saturday) unless the hive has other ideas.
I purchased the kit with tanks already built and mounted on the wings - assume the float senders are Van's standard issue for the era (2010-2011). At this point I'd be willing to angle-drill a hole in the end of the tank and mount a capacitive sender if it were feasible - the EFIS can be configured independently for either type.
Ideas??
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