Dear Chris, Spook, Repaimanjack.

Thanks for the response to my posting on Saturday. The posting has been relegated two pages down. I was away the last few days and never got a chance to get online.

I did try to wack the dash but didn't see much changes. Anyway the needle seem to move at its own whims and fancies. I observed also that yesterday the needle was well-behaved, meaning it did not fluctuate but stayed steady with the usual decrement on gasoline usage. Hope all is well, but I still need to be sure of that as I do not want to run out of gas anywhere, anytime.

I'll be watching out for the posting on the 900 FAQ from repairmanjack.

Thanks guys!

Regards
Laozong

Be sure to use your trip odometer to keep track. If "whackage" on the dash makes a difference, then you're probably looking at a gauge fault. In my experience, the later model gauge looks very nice, none of the corrision warned about in the FAQ. Erratic failure sounds like a lot of possible things.

As I posted, the 68-OHM is the fastest, easiest way to narrow your problem down. $1.00 at Radioshack. If it turns out to be sender unit nickle contacts, let me know and I can send you parts. Good luck!


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Six Volvos: all wagons.... 1972 145S, 1976 245 DL, 1983 245 GL, 1986 740 GLE, 1990 740 GL, now a 1995 940. Number 7 (a 1967 122S Wagon) is on the way.... Who needs a sedan, when you've got storage compartments in a wagon?

There's some diodes on the flexible circuit board on the back on the cluster which go bad, and can cause similar symptoms.

OK, I'm a 240 guy reading this board.

How about the classic cause for bad fuel gauge readings -
bad sender?
240 senders have all the tank terminals on top for fuel and vapors and electric in and out of the tank.
Same on 900 cars?
If so, a 900's terminals could be all corroded by now,
and sender could be malfunctioning too.

I'm looking forward to your comments, as I'm considering a 900 for our next Volvo.

240s also had compensatin boards which would make the temp guage go wacky. same thing would happen to the fuel guage if the voltage stabilizer broke. I've had a number of 960s with nutty fuel guages cause by a bad circuit board on the back of the cluster. It has a mind of it's own and the fact that smacking the dash doesn't do anything tends me to beleive that it's a faulty part in the guage wiring.
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cjregensurger@yahoo.com '86, '88 740 GLE; '88, 89 740 Turbo, '88 760 Ti

The 960 may or may not have the regulator board on the back. The green manual tells service professionals to install that board if it is not present - it allows one to adjust for the different gas tank capacities.

My extesive post on fuel sender units is in regards to bad sender unit contacts on the sender unit, how to diagnose, and repair it.
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Volvo #6: all wagons.... 1972 145S, 1976 245 DL, 1983 245 GL, 1986 740 GLE, 1990 740 GL, now a 1995 940...