My 2004 VFR's fuel gauge just stopped working.

At first it showed one bar flashing as if low on gas, but I had just filled it! The rest of the instrument cluster works fine, just the fuel gauge. On startup, the gauge shows the regular routine, going to full, but then it goes back to one bar flashing!

This is my first bike with a fuel gauge, so it's not that important and I don't want to spend a lot of money at the shop. Do I need to take the tank off to get to the problem or ...? Thanks for any advice or suggestions.

 

A quick check would be to see if the float in the tank is not stuck down. Open the tank cap and peer in , you will see a little cylinder on a stick. See if you can move it up and down . Thats where id start

 

The fuel gauge is an electrical resistance device, and high resistance = low level. If you have any kind of electrical circuit issue e.g. dirty pins in the connector or an earth block fault that will cause infinite resistance, then you will see the low fuel display. If the float is not stuck then I'd start by disconnecting and cleaning the blue 2P connector under the tank going to the fuel sender and see if that helps. You can also measure resistance across the fuel sender unit 1-5 kohms is full and 92-96 is empty.

 

Good one Terry, after replacing the thermostat I forgot to connect the blue 2 pin connector under the tank and the display flashed 1 bar. Dirty connections is my bet

 

Well, thanks everyone for your suggestions. However, I lifted the tank up (after checking the float valve was working), disconnected and reconnected the blue connector, and still same problem. My local dealer will charge me an hour to replace the unit, so I'll let you know if it was the sending unit, a short, or whatever.

 

Did you ever figure out the issue.

 

If you have a multimeter you can test the sending unit in the tank yourself. It is just a variable resistance device, where the resistance increases as the float drops lower in the tank.

I would start with a physical check, look into the tank and check that the float can lift and drop freely. Then do the electrical resistance check (with the float still installed). If both of those pass then your fault lies elsewhere.

 

I had this issue recently as well. I ohmed out the wiring and checked out the sender, all good. Finally pulled out the instrument cluster thinking that I might find a trace on the circuit board that could be bad. I was wrong about the latter - the traces are crazy small and even if I had found a bad one I probably couldn't have done anything about it. Once reassembled it was working again - I think I must have had a bit of corrosion on a connector and the act of unplugging / replacing it cured it.