Larry wrote:

Rosalie B. wrote in
:

We've never had any trouble with ours (knock wood).

The one on the Amel is virtually foolproof. You remove the filler cap
in the center cockpit's starboard seat and try to guess where the level
is on the fuel slopping about under the cap. There is no filler hose or
vent hose as the starboard seating IS the fuel tank on the sharki, which
is located in the starboard aft passageway back to the aft berthing
compartment. Open the cap and see if fuel sloshes out. If it does, we
got plenty of fuel at the moment. The tank is narrow and quite deep
into the bilge so its level changes a LOT with the litres in the tank.

What I've never figured out is why on such an expensive boat there isn't
a SIGHT GLASS on the aft end of the tank right over the main battery
switch. There's plenty of room. Amel's cost more than Catalinas and I
think they can afford it....

We have sight gauges for the water tanks but with the tank tender we
don't use them much. They are there though.

Bob tried to figure out what would be a better float that could be
more easily seen, and he found that a little plastic cowboy figure's
hat was the perfect diameter. So he cut off the cowboy's arms (which
had drawn guns that stuck out beyond the hat), and the legs (bowlegged
- also stuck out to far) and now we have just a cowboy's torso and hat
riding up and down in the sight gauge.


The cheap crap float guages fail on boats because they are too cheap to
withstand the constant sloshing about and soon simply wear out the
resistive element the little slider rubs against for a contact. This is
the stupidest kind of guage sender, of course, they could put in a boat.

Boats should have the senders that are in my old Mercedes cars. There
is a tube with a tiny hole in the bottom and a vent hold in the top
inside the tank that is as tall as the tank. Inside the tube is a float
with a hole in it that rides up and down on a rod through the hole. A
slide contact on the side of the tank makes the electrical contact as
the float rides up and down to give you an accurate level, poorly
calibrated on the guage, though. The tiny hole and tube is the key to
it all. The tube is located in the exact center of the tank so no
matter which direction the tank tilts, the liquid level remains the same
until the car falls over, of course. Heeling won't make it read wrong.
The tiny hole in the bottom is the only way for fuel to go in and out.
This creates a long hysteresis for changing the level in the
tube....eliminating, completely, the effects of the float in your boat
tank riding the waves inside the tank. The level in the tube remains
constant no matter how many waves you're jumping.

Of course, this would raise Brunswick's cost-per-unit by $2 in a
$180,000 yacht so don't hold your breath....