1943 Dodge WC51 Fuel Tank, Gauge and Sender

The fuel tank was out of this truck when I purchased it. The previous owner had the tank cleaned and the inside coated with a sealer, which was a good thing, as I then didn't need to mess with it at all. Just slap the tank in and hook it up. Or so I thought...

Well, OK, there are a few things that also need to be done, one being to see if the fuel gauge and sending unit work. There was a new sending unit that came with the truck, so I figured just hooking it up to the gauge would be all that needed to be done. Think again. I hooked things up and nothing happened. I decided to pull the gauge out of the dash so I could mess with this stuff on the bench. With everything hooked up on the bench, the gauge still didn't work. Next step was to measure the resistance of the sending unit. It read open, which isn't what it's supposed to read. I pulled off the metal cover of the sender and found a soldered wire had come off its attaching point. Poor solder job.

With everything hooked back up to a power supply again and with a spare gauge from the shop, things are working fairly well. "E" is with the float all the way down.

Half a tank shows with the float about a third the way up.

Full registers when the float is two thirds the way up, which will work for me, for now.

The replacement gauge didn't have a bracket so I made one from a piece of square tubing off a now-defunct treadmill.

Ta-da.... No, the tank isn't three-quarters full. I wish. I'm just testing out the truck's wiring.

Next is to mount the sender in the tank. It didn't have a gasket so I made one.

I used some red tacky Form-A-Gasket on the gasket so it wouldn't leak. That's never coming off again.

After the tank got installed in the truck, I took a break from this project and worked on the truck's brakes. It's now 7 months later and I finally got around to hooking up the filler neck and vent to the tank. That wasn't an easy task, getting the vent line hooked up in the small space to work in.

Once things seemed to be back together, put several gallons of gas in the tank and glanced under the rear of the truck for leaks. None to be seen. I started working on getting the fuel line hooked back up the the carburetor when I smelled gas. I looked under the middle of the truck and gas was streaming out. I climbed under and found a loose chunk of rubber line between two hard lines. I got that leak stopped after dousing myself in gas.

I then filled the carburetor bowl with gas and turned over the engine. It fired right up for a second, then died. After several more cycles of filling/starting/dying, I unhooked the discharge hose from the fuel pump and hooked up a vacuum pump to hopefully suck fuel from the tank. I didn't get anywhere, as it seemed there was a leak. I did a little searching and found a cracked fuel line coming off the OEM fuel filter on the firewall. After fixing that, I got good suction and gas filled the fuel pump's sediment bowl.

Once more I filled the carb's bowl with gas and started the engine. This time it ran, and kept running on fuel being drawn from the tank. Yes!!!!

The truck is now drivable on the street on its own fuel tank. A few days after getting this job done I drove the truck to my tractor club's local show. Fortunately it was only 7 miles away. That was a harrowing experience, as the brakes need serious attention.