2thousand5.4

Ok so lately my fuel gauge has Been "bouncing" up and down as I drive. It will move up or down about a quarter of a tank. Like yesterday I went to Autozone and had almost 3/4 or a tank, then all the sudden the gauge shot up to almost fuelly then stayed there until I was pulling into the parking lot, then it fell back down to were it was before. It will do this maybe 2 times a week. Should this be something to worry about? I don't want to be stranded with no gas when my needle reads 1/2 a tank.

Tackle

Something to worry about? No. Unless you run out of gas I suppose. Reset the trip meter when you fill up. Annoyance? Yes.

Replace the fuel sending unit. Motorcraft sending unit is like $150.

charliedyal

Yeppers. Once again, the mighty [MENTION=118772]Tackle[/MENTION] has hit the proverbial nail on the head. Now it's just a choice of removing the bed or dropping the tank to gain access to the fuel pump.

2thousand5.4

Yeah it's not worth all that work and 150$ for me to fix it. I know how many miles I normally get to a tank so as long as I watch that I will live with it. It's not really an issue that me as long as it's not too far off. I always fill up at a quarter of a tank anyway

charliedyal

That will be ok for a while. What you'll notice is that it will get worse as time passes. You may want to go ahead and start putting back a few dollars every week and change it in a few months.

Warspite

Is this the only gauge in the cluster acting up? May be less of a problem in the '99+ models, but clusters for the '97-'98 have those @#$% film contacts (can you tell that I hate those?), and I've had first the Oil pressure, then Battery go flaky, then next the Speedo acted up. I removed the cluster to put LEDs in, clean the contacts, and shimming the underside of the film where the contact met with a corner of a playing card. Fixed the intermittent. Yours may be just a dirty pin or two? Cheaper than a sender! Just a can of electrical contact cleaner - and about an hour's time.

2thousand5.4

This might be the issue. I recently did a LED swap and maybe the contacts got dirty

tmsha1

my fuel gauge is fluctuating as well on my 04. also had a high oil pressure reading for a few dye but now thats fixed. is it that simple just to clean the contacts?