Back to......VANagains NEWest 65 Chevy SportVan Deluxe

donivan65 wrote:,,,before that van there was this van he got from New York and we freshened it up  little,,,,,,

https://vintage-vans.forumotion.com/t2234-back-to-vanagains-new-65-sportvan-deluxe

VANagain wrote:After a lot of soaking, scraping and cleaning, the old sending unit looked pretty good. However, here's a word to the wise: Before you spend all the time to clean something, make sure it works first! I hooked it up to a multimeter and got no signal, no mater where I moved the float. Same thing when I tested a new unit!

Here's another thing to know: Make sure your ohm meter is set to the proper range. I had it on 200K and it should have been 200. Big difference!!



Of course no one remanufactures a gas tank sending unit for our vans. But I had been told that Impalas used 30 Ohm units like ours. The tubing and stuff was a different shape but you could remove the rheostat from the new one and put it on ours. So I ordered a stainless steel unit for a I61-64 Impalz vfom CarPartsDiscount.com for $34 (3/8" line, like ours). I took it apart and noticed it had a lot fewer windings than my van one, but it tested out with the right resistance: 0 to 30 Ohms.

But then I noticed an important difference. The Impala rheostat had a longer "throw" than the van's. This allows the float arm to travel a lot further, maybe twice as far as ours. Their gas tanks must be deeper. If I just used the Impala one as-is, my guage would only travel from 1/4 to 3/4. So I came up with a plan to shorten the float arm to compensate. Look at the pictures below. The top one shows the stock van unit. I marked how far the float went at each extreme (full and empty). If I shortened the arm, that would cause it to rotate more degrees to go the same distance.

Then, the more I looked at that shiny, stainless steel Impala unit, the less I wanted to put my old one back in. So, I spent a couple hours carefully bending the tubing in my vice with rubber jaws on it. First I had to bend the top 90 degrees, since the Impala's mount to the back side of the tank and ours go in the top. That one was not easy to bend and I had to be careful not to kink it. I couldn't really undo their tight 90 degree bend but then I realized I didn't need to totally. It was okay if the tube still had curves in it, as long as the top ended up perpendicular to the tube. Next, the bottom tube was way too long, so I cut off the bent part they had and added my own bend using a tubing bender (not nearly as easy as fuel line, that stainless is tough). I'm pretty sure I got the it to where it will pick up the last bit of gas in the bottom of the tank.

Bending the float arm was a lot easier. And it has to follow the shape of the pickup tube or else you can't install the thing through the hole in the gas tank!





It may be that the 62-65 Nova sending unit would be a better match, because it is a lot shorter, but I figured I could shorten the Impala one, but it's hard to lengthen the Nova, if it needs it.



This weekend I should get this in the tank and the tank in the van. Then we'll know if it really worked. Hmm, maybe I'll just set the tank on the ground, hook up the wires, and test it by filling it and emptying it with water first...