Brief Description: Fueled 417CT for 1st-Calibrated fuel guages
We were continuing our final check before removing panel and decided we needed to calibrate our fuel gauges. For the first time, we called the FBO and told them we needed 100LL delivered to our hangar. Boy, were they surprised! Image #1 shows tanker at hangar and Image #2 shows Steve putting exactly 2.5 gallons in the left tank. We then turned on the power and the left gauge still showed 0 gallons. We were devastated. We did the trouble shooting recommended and it indicated that we had a faulty float resistance sender in our left tank! I could not believe it for we had checked the sender unit many times before we put it in the tank. Back to the drawing board! We put 2.5 gallons in the right tank and we please to see that it registered almost 2.5 gallon exactly. We decided before we pulled the sender unit from the wing we would do some studying. Someone on Van's Air Force suggested that we give the balking sender a "gentle" tap with a hammer. So we added some more fuel to the left tank and tapped it and much to our relief, the gauge registered 5 gallons minus the fuel used to fill the pump, gascolator, etc. Image #3 shows the left gauge just under 5 gallons and the right just over 2.5 gallons. We were almost sure that the sender would have to come out since checking the wiring, ground etc. did nothing. Thanks to the friend of all plane builders, a plastic tipped mallet came to the rescue. I think that the float had become fixed since it has been over 6 months since we installed it.
