"Papa Smurf" - 1966 GMC 1500 Custom

[LordNatedawg]

Slowly fixing problems as they arise on my truck. Today was replacing the stretched pinion yoke. The old yoke was allowing the driveshaft u-joint to bounce and it was causing a major vibration while driving. After the replacement the truck drives noticeably smoother. Although there are other vibrations present that I will need to track down. My u-joints are all tight. The carrier bearing visually looks okay, but I may take my drive line to a shop to have that replaced.

The other items I need to fix are my brakes. My front brakes are hot spotted from past brake fires. And my rear brakes are not adjusting evenly. The right drum is either over adjusting, or the left drum isn't adjusting. I loosened the right side and tightened up the left to make them even. I will recheck them after a while to see if the problem reappears.

Lastly, I had to bypass the fuel gauge in my cluster. It is stuck reading 1/4 no matter how much fuel is present. I wired in an aftermarket fuel gauge for now, but I would really like to get the factory gauge functional again. It is capable of sweeping from full to empty, but when sending any signal it will only read 1/4. The aftermarket gauge is working, which tells me that the sending unit is not the issue.

[Prowbar]

Nice work. The fuel gauge should be easy to test, make sure you have the right fuel sender with the correct resistance. I'm pretty sure mine has a range from 0-30 Ohms. Later gauges go to 90 Ohms I believe. The aftermarket gauge might be for a 90 Ohms sender.

[FetchMeAPepsi]

My factory gauge had a similar issue. The ground wire (brown?) was shorting and had to be rigged to connect properly. If you wiggle the plug to the back of the instrument cluster, does it start working?

[James]

Originally Posted by FetchMeAPepsi

To view some links or images in this forum your post count must be 1 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. Maybe you should introduce yourself with a new topic?

My factory gauge had a similar issue. The ground wire (brown?) was shorting and had to be rigged to connect properly. If you wiggle the plug to the back of the instrument cluster, does it start working?

The connector pins is where mine problem was. I had bad solder connections between the pins and the flexible (plastic) printed circuit board. On mine, I cleaned off the old solder and apply fresh solder. No more problems. This type of work required experiences working with flexible printed circuit board, otherwise it will melt the board and become junk. This board use lead/tin solder and not the newer stuff. The lead/tin melt at a lower temperature and the new stuff will melt the board when you get it hot enough to melt the solder.