went to oreilly today, they didn't have the sending unit o-ring in stock and couldn't find the filter/screen in the computer. Going to get those off the internet. Spent some time further exploring the sending unit itself today, next will go significantly faster.
meter is kind of hard to read in the pictures. 8.62 mega Ohms starting point from the ground lug at the plug to the slider, which is far too many.
Lots of sanding, wire brush and checking with the meter and I was able to get under 0.5 ohm from the slider all the way up to this point here. Not many options for re-doing this isolated rivet-stud but it was causing all my issues.
used solid solder and flux paste and a garbage hand-held butane torch and finally was able to get these two dots to stick. By passed the lower connection which is mostly corrupted by rust. Only other thing I could think of would've been to just use another wire and run it from up here down the the lower body. This worked in getting my resistance all the way down to zero though
on the other side of the circuit, I was able to get good connection from the far end of the wire through the plug stud. Big issue was the rivet going through the isolators to the tiny resistance wire inside.
lots of sanding with 60 and 220 grit later and it cleaned up alright. Could not get a low reading where the resistance wire went under the rivet, went ahead and skipped over that as well. This stuff was all thinner and I was able to use an electric solder iron and some small diameter rosin core.
if you didn't notice in the above pictures, the external wire has snapped at some point. Folded those together and soldered them back as well
Now I had at or very near 0 ohms on both sides of the circuit, time to put it back together. After all this handling, I did need to bend back the little slider as it wasn't making connection. there is an audible difference as it skips across the resistance wires. If you get it all back together and you measure ~90 ohms across the plug studs (in any position), your problem is a lack of contact in that area from the slider. Took me a few assembly trials to figure that out
Finally got my high 60/low 70 Ohm for the Empty fuel position, 66.5 ohms
and 8.6 ohms for Full position. great success
cut off the worst part of the old pickup tube, grabbed a length of discard 5/16" tube and a nail set/punch to use as a flare tool
and tapped it into place with a hammer and did a real, real bad job of soldering that joint together. Should've gone back into the garage and grabbed a bigger torch. Ended up making another lap with the rosin core to hook into the solid solder base. Ultimately, it makes a pretty decent seal. Surely good enough for what i'm doing. Plenty of length to trim it down once I get a cheap screen/sock/filter to put on there.
going back to welding on the fuel tank tomorrow and see if I can get the other one pulled out.
exhaust, can't forget about exhaust