1998 175 Sport - Non std fuel sender ??

[MercGuy]

I have a 1998 Sea Ray 175 Sport that I bought new, and has been a great boat.

This year the fuel sender failed. A little research led me to believe that fuel tank senders are standard and any "universal" sender will work. So I bought a sender from Bass Pro and took the old one out of my tank.

All went well until I tried to screw the new sender in. The new sender has a 5 screw pattern, and the original also is held in with 5 screws, but I'll be damned if the original sender screws are on a slightly smaller bolt circle than the replacement that I bought. Huh ??

There is no way to get the 5 screw holes on the universal sender to line up with the 5 holds in the tank. Does anyone know anything about why Sea Ray would use a non-standard fuel sender and where I could get one ??

Thanks for any help on this.

-Steve

 

[magster65]

Re: 1998 175 Sport - Non std fuel sender ??

Small differences from different manufacturers. You'll either have to keep searching or modify the one you bought.
Re-drill the holes in the sending unit and weld the old ones closed...

 

[MercGuy]

Re: 1998 175 Sport - Non std fuel sender ??

In case anyone is interested I got this situation resolved.

I went to the dealer that I bought the boat from, explained the situation and he looked at me like I had 2 heads. No help there...

So I looked over the senders that they had available. It seems that there are 2 types of "universal" senders. One has long coarse thread screws and the other has short fine thread screws. I've confirmed this at a 2nd dealer also.

In any case I bought the sender with the long coarse thread screws and upon reading the instructions I noticed they mentioned that THE SCREW HOLES ARE NOT SYMETRICAL.

The first sender that I bought did not mention this (I went back and re-read them) and nobody I asked has ever mentioned it.

That means that out of the 5 possible positions you can install a replacement sender ONLY ONE will work !!!

Sure enough, I rotated the replacement sender around and around until all the screws lined up with my tank.

I'm good to go now !!!