Hi everyone,
For the past two years, I've been dealing with a malfunctioning fuel level indicator. I am using the Smartcraft Fuel/Oil/Paddle harness and I have the leads from the fuel tank running to the engine computer so it displays the fuel level on my smartcraft guages. The fuel levels would fluctuate between empty (making the Merc Monitor freak out "Low Fuel!") and full. My connections checked out so it had to be the float issue. Over time, it just went to "E".
After reading a couple of posts on here from Mike Breaux "astasoftride" and Lee, I decided that I'd order the repair kit for my boat. I called Bill at Allison last week and got the kit. $21. The repair kit comes with a new float with integrated magnet, rubber gasket, and some screws.
Below are some terrible pics but it shows you how easy it is to repair.
Top of my fuel tank, showing connections (which I had removed). Unscrew the five screws. They have rubber washers. (oh and follow safety guidelines for ventilation and such)
Slowly pull the float tube out of the tank. The gas should drain rather quickly, but you may have some gas to get on your stuff if you don't have some protection down on your deck. Nothing to it so far.
This is the bottom of the tube. You wil remove the two small screws. Be careful to use a small phillips screw driver. These are really small, short screws so don't lose them!!
This is what was on the bottom of the tube. . . .one of the magnets. Evidence that the float has become defective. You will need to take out the old float and account for two of these small square magnets.
This is the tube with the new black float installed. You just put it in the tube. You can see the magnets are secured well in the float. You can also see the an alignment channel for the cap you just removed and the holes for the screws. Just remember when you put the screws back in to not strip the slots.
This is the old float and I've added the two magnets back to it to see how it would have looked. The magnets appeared to be glued in. The new float takes care of this.
Instead of using the old cork gasket, I used the black rubber gasket that came in the kit. It fits under top of the cover but you'll have to rotate the screw holes to get the holes to line up, but they will!! Assemble and reattach leads. The instructions say to install leads to test before reinstalling in the tank but my leads weren't long enough. Anyway, it works!!
Hope this helps someone.
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He called and they replaced it for free.
