Hey lads, Around a couple months ago, I replaced the gas gauge on my 1999 VFR800, because the old one not only was stuck in place, but would read a full tank reguardless of its position. It was tough to get a new one, because they don’t make the part anymore, so I bought one on eBay and it returned to sender. I contacted the seller and he either offered to refund me the item cost (but not the shipping I payed extra for), or I could pay the shipping fee again and have it shipped to me. Neither of those would fly with me, so I opened a request with eBay and got a full refund. I found another gas gauge, it finally came in, I installed it and it just would not stop leaking gas. Eventually I found an o-ring to replace the old one (from an Autozone quick release bumper kit), and all was well for three months. Then, during my last ride this Monday, my gas gauge suddenly dropped to empty. One flashing bar. When I power on the bike, two bars come up, and then it drops down to One flashing bar. I unplugged it several times, tried to find any breaks in the wires, etc, nothing. What’s to do now? Is it a problem with the sensor, wiring, or gauge cluster? Any ideas? Thanks all.
In the service manual, go to 19.19. perform the tests as outlined. The following is getting ahead of the tests you need to run, but the fuel level sender reports to the dash through the blue connector on the back of the instrument cluster. This connector interface is prone to bad connections most likely due to the design. I've had other dash related issues simply due to high resistance connections at this connector. The screen fuel level shows lower levels the higher ohms (resistance) the float assembly sees. If the connection at the connector is iffy and of high resistance, that may explain the low level reading on the display. Pull the connector and clean all surfaces with a contact cleaner spray like Deoxit.
