Silly Questions

In the picture below, what's the little cap on the distributor cap between the #1 and #3 spark plug wire connections?



I replaced my distributor cap and that "cap for the cap" was gone from the original distributor cap so now I'm not sure if it just got lost and I should leave the cap that came with the new distributor cap on there or if I should take it off, or perhaps it doesn't matter?


My fuel sending unit is faulty. It indicates full ok but falls to empty when I still have around 1/3 of a tank left. I got another one from a junkyard but when I got it home and opened it I found a coil of bare wire and a copper contact arm that's connected to the float and moves along the coil as the float moves up and down. The contact arm on this unit was literally worn thru in places so it would stop making contact with the coil as the fuel level fell below half or so. Is that how they typically fail? It would seem to explain the way mine is behaving.

If that's a typical thing that occurs inevitably with age then I won't mess with a used one. I just don't really want to spend $80+ on a new one either. Right now I watch my odometer and keep a full gas can in the back for the times when I accidentally run empty.

Sorry for the silly questions. My manual doesn't cover these things and I wasn't sure where else to find them.

the little cap on the distributor is so any moisture that gets in will get out.

that makes sense. I'll leave it alone. Thanks

No question you don't know the answer too is a silly, hence why you ask when you don't know. Unless of course it is truly silly then someone will call you on it.

Yes, you hit the preverbial nail on the head of why the fuel sender fails. Buy a new one but know that amount of wear is not normal. Other members here have reported gettting hundreds of thousands of miles out of OEM senders. It's the luck of the draw.

Dan

I didn't actually check how many miles were on the truck I pulled that from. Kinda figured it wouldn't be worth putting in a used replacement for a part that wears out, or trying to repair mine. Maybe I'll replace it someday when I have time and money.

Thanks for the info

1. I ordered an aftermarket sender ($50) at local parts store for my 1988 but checked its ohms resistance through the travel, had "open" regions, didn't buy it.

2. I then fixed my original sender by bending, it worked like 3 additional years.

3. Mrs. Cusser then bought me a factory sender (about $90) from sponsor Dan Atkins (), has worked great.

I thought maybe I could just bend that contact around too but the one I had was missing too much of the original contact metal and it just wouldn't work. I could try doing that with the one in my truck but honestly if I"m going to go to the effort of jacking up the bed and dropping the fuel tank (with 7 hoses/cables to disconnect I think) then I would want to at least have a new one on hand and at that point I might as well put in the new one.

So I'll probably end up with a good new one just like you did. The truck does have 164,000 miles but I bought it at 113,500 and the sender had already failed so it's probably long gone by now.

Thanks for sharing your experience. It's good to know this is normal and minor.

Apparently, some people blame short-lived senders on today's alcohol-containing gasoline.

Maybe it's just planned-for, manufacturers figure they get a decent share of the repair business, as long as it makes it through the warranty period OK...

That may be partly why it's there, but the main reason is just to vent the air. The nature of what happens inside the cap causes the air to become ionized. So why is that important information? Because an ionized atmosphere will allow the spark to jump around, and cause a misfire in a cylinder when the plug fires out of time.