Gas Level Sensor

[TheDos]

Since I bought my car, the gas gauge has been broken. It will read full but sticks at 3/4 and periodically will 'spaz out' and move back and forth very quickly. The gas light still comes on, so I know when to fill it up again. Does anyone know how I could fix this? I was told that one of the level sensors in the tank is bad. Has anyone replaced them before? How difficult is it?

[Erik j]

The sensor takes about 10 minutes to remove. take out the back seat, take off the black metal cover and remove it.

[TheDos]

Oh ok, that doesn't sound to hard. Thanks.

[Erik j]

Yeah, its a pretty easy job to do. I have to do it to 3 of my 4 BMWs this week.

[TheDos]

Good luck with that. But does it sound like that is the problem? Or should I be looking at something else?

[bmwsun]

yes it does, the fuel sending unit is inside of the pump (or attached to it) and that is what has gone bad

[e34john]

P/N? Ive had the same problem forever, except my low level light doesn't come on. It doesn't really matter because I drive to work 5 times a week and school the other two days. It just sucks when someone drives the car without telling me. Had to walk 2 miles once because of that.

[Erik j]

realoem.com for all your part number needs

[e34john]

I did. It has the diagram but no part description or numbers are listed.

[Erik j]

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts.do?model=1113&mospid=47309&btnr=16_0039&hg=16&fg=05

You didnt look hard enough. took me 30 seconds.

[atomic]

Later model e30's have one on each side (2 total) of the tank as well. To replace them is the same by taking the bottom side of the back seat out and removing the black metal covers.

[e34john]

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...39&hg=16&fg=05

You didnt look hard enough. took me 30 seconds.

Thanks for find it!

[Erik j]

Thanks for find it!

The picture you were looking at was for the gas tank, it has images for the fuel pump an everything in it. The one I showed you was the next one up. realoem is funny about some things like that, they will the item pictured but no info, then you go to another section and find the same picture with the info you needed.

[TheDos]

So I looked at both the level sensors yesterday. I was told that because my gas light still works, that the driver side sensor is still good. I switched out the passenger side one with a sensor from my buddies car. It still wasn't reading correctly. Does anyone know where problem would be?

[acroll80]

As far as the gauge spaz out problem, I would look into the actual gauge in the cluster. the temp gage and fuel gage have two small nuts that clamp them down to the cluster to insure a good connection. On both E30's I've owned I had the same problem. One of them had no nuts at all so I cleaned the connections , and reinstalled with new nuts. This fixed my erratic gauges. I would also replace both sending units. Ive seen a few that varied in accuracy in the past.