Hey all, my 94 is acting weird. The fuel gauge quits working sometimes and slowly falls back to empty. When it starts working again it slowly goes back to where its accurate. Any ideas?

 

I guess best thing is to check the gauge and wiring first.

Back by the fuel tank there will be 4 wires that go to the top of the tank.
1 pair is fuel pump's 12volt and ground
1 pair is fuel level sender's pulse 5volt and ground

Pink/black stripe wire and Black wire are fuel pump's 12v and ground respectively

Yellow/white stripe wire is from fuel gauge, unfortunately you can not test this wire with a volt meter.
Orange wire is the Ground for sender.

Ford fuel gauges(1989 and up) use 16ohms = empty and 158ohms = full

0 ohms = short to ground
1,000,000,000 ohms = broken connection

So if you disconnect the wires and turn on the key you should see fuel gauge go up to, and passed, Full, high ohms

If you Ground the Yellow/white wire(key on) the gauge should go to Empty
Also test the Orange ground wire, if it was loose I would expect Full on gauge not empty but.......never hurts to check a ground

If gauge doesn't do either, then problem is in the dash, most likely Anti-slosh module.

Google: Ranger anti-slosh module
lots of info out there on replacing or by passing it


If gauge behaves correctly then you will need to replace sending unit in the tank

 

Right on thx Ron. I watched some videos and this looks just like what mine id doing. If it quits, the hand drops ever so slowly. And if it starts working it raises very slowly. All the bad sending units and bad gauges I have had always do things pretty fast. Thx again I will try this fix asap.