Skysports Capacitive Fuel Senders:
Tonight I want to get the sender for the left tank ready to
install. First thing is to test it and make sure it outputs a
voltage as it should. Using my 8 D-cell battery arrangement we
used to test the AE Fuel Gaurdians I connected the sender to power. Then I connected a multimeter... It's reading about 8 volts.
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Turning the "empty" screw I adjusted the voltage to 0 volts.
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Now
to see if they'll actually read a different voltage when fuel is
introduced I capped the end of a small PVC pipe and filled it with auto
gas (I'm only doing this now for testing… these guys will be
re-calibrated on the plane later) Once it was secured to the
table I submerged the sender... the deeper it went, the greater the
voltage read... yea... it works! Once it was fully submerged I
went ahead and adjusted the full screw until the multimeter read 5
volts... again probably not necessary, but hey, I get the feeling of
doing something electronically important (a challenge for me!)
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Since I had everything set up, I went ahead and tested the other sender in the same manner.
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Now for the moment of truth… bending the thing to fit
in the tank… This turned out to be quite frustrating. Once
I got over being nervous about trashing the thing, it became nothing
but a trial & error event. The shape that provides the best
position for accurate reading doesn't necessarily coincide with a shape
that can be installed. I used my clothes hanger as a guide, and
that's pretty much all it is... Once it was more or less at it's
overall shape, the clothes hanger pretty much is worthless... but
there's still a lot more fine tuning to do to the sender. I
wanted to get it relatively close to some other items in the tank so I
can dab some proseal between it and some structure to keep it from
bouncing around... but at the same time it can't touch anything in the
tank... like I said, trial & error. Anyway, to get to the
final shape I found I had to shorten the sender (3 times) a total of
about 5 inches.
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Once I finally got the fit acceptable, the final thing to do
was to drill this hole at the appex of the bend at the lowest
point. If we don't put this in, the lowest opening the fuel will
have to drain out of the tube is at the head of the sender unit and
that's mid-way up the tank.
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So there we go… I think we're all ready to seal this
baby in! Well, actually I'd like to test it one more time to make
sure it still works after all the bending… next time...
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