GW fuel sender problems

[choogenboom]

Within the span of 6 months I had to replace all 4 fuel senders on my 2 Gradys. In the case of my 1994 228G the magnets in the floats became unglued, and in the case of my 2004 330 Express both floats would no longer float - the hovered about mid level in the fuel. One of the floats was visibly swollen and cracked. Replacements are easy to get from http://www.wemausa.com/, the company that seems to be the dominant supplier of fuel senders in the marine industry. If you order a fuel sender don't forget to order the gasket as well; the rubber gaskets under all my senders were in rough shape. The new gaskets are cork, by the way. In the case of the newer 2004 boat I only had to replace the floats and gaskets. WEMA does not advertise the floats on their web site but when I asked them for it they had a special float replacement kit which was much cheaper than the whole fuel sender. I asked them if my experience was unique or if others were experiencing a similar high rate of failure and they said my experience was unique. I don't believe it. I think they failed due to E10 and there is a coming rash of failures.

Anyone else having problems with their fuel senders?

As a side note, my company makes wireless ultrasonic level sensors for industrial chemical tanks. With a little tweaking they would be perfect for use in marine fuel tanks and would be highly reliable. Since they are microprocessor controlled Grady could literally stock only one level sender for all their boats' fuel, holding and water tanks. Very cool! I contacted Grady customer service asking if other Grady owners were having fuel sender problems and they said no. Again, I don't believe it. I offered their engineers to make them a ultrasonic level sensor for same or cheaper than a float type sender. Grady's engineers did not even give me the courtesy of a reponse. Makes one wonder if they value their customer's feedback.

 

[Boats Rock]

I had both of mine fail this year. Main tank was stuck on full and aux tank was all over the board. Asked the marina to fill up my main tank and I headed out. I got 20 miles and it ran out of fuel. Lucky there was enough fuel in the aux tank to get to a fuel dock. That shot my day fishing. I asked my marina how much fuel they had put in my boat and they told me the gauge read full so they didn't add any. I put two WEMA senders in that week.
I took apart the the Ispro senders and found the magnets had fallen out of the floats.

 

[TBone]

YUP!

Both mine failed this year too. They were fine until the I ran the tanks out

and re-fueled with the ethanol junk. Coincidence? I think not.

We had a thread on this not to long ago. I believe BobP recomended the

WEMA senders and said he had good luck. I as well will be upgrading with the

WEMA's this winter.

 

[fsc60]

Fuel sender fix

I had the same problem this summer with the magnets falling out of the float, being an auto mechanic I try to fix every thing myself. Its not hard to take the sender apart, just remove the nut on the bottom and take the bottom cover off. Carefully bend the tab out of the way and the float will slide out, pay attention to the top and bottom of float, always put back the way you found it. After thinking a while I came up with the cheapest magnet fix out there. Dont laugh, but its Crazy Glue.
I was concerned with the fuel attacking the glue but figured what is there to loose. It fixed the problem and its been a couple of months with no issuses. The trick is to glue one magnet at a time and put a spacer between them when glueing the 2nd one. A folded piece of paper is all you need. If you look close you can see exactly where they belong on the float. I dont know if it matters but I tried to put them in with the polarity in the same direction. The o-ring under the sender was fine and I reused it.