Brief Description: Prepared Fuel Sensors for Wing Fuel Tanks.
The Stewart Warner fuel sensors are the resistive type with floats on a wire that move a rheostat as the fuel level changes. The float was attached to a straight stiff wire that had to be bent per Van's drawing. I had to bend the float wire per the drawing with a 90 deg. bend with each leg approximately 3" in length with no specified bend radius. Another small radius bend (0.060") specified in the Stewart Warner directions was bent with some difficulty. This 90 deg. bend goes thru the rotator center and then snaps into the rheostat rotator arm.
I used the vise and a nail which was 0.120" diameter to bend the small radius on the second sensor and it came out OK, but the first one I bent had too large a radius and it would not snap into the rotator. I had to mess with that bend quite a bit to not break it because of work hardening. A little filing on the plastic rotator center hole gave just enough room for the "too large" radius to finally snap into the rotator. You can't unbend a stiff wire and not break it, so the next time I need to make a bend, I'll be sure to find something with the correct diameter to bend around. Nothing is simple!
