My Tach does the same thing as the vid up above. Thought it was the engine rpmbouncing, now I know it's the cluster.

 

the bouncing fuel gauge thing may not be a cluster issue. Or at least not entirely.

When I bought my TT, the guage didn't work, it stayed on empty. I pulled [one of?] the fuel sender unit, cleaned the contacts with a scotch pad, and dropped it back in. Slight improvement, but it may be that I was screwing with the wires. Now it usually reads full, but occasionally the needle will drop with my fuel level, but like EliTTe, empty is not empty. For me, its around the quarter tank mark. I know there is some adjustment thru Vag-com, but w/o playing with it enough to get the guage to work 100%, I don't know if my adjustments are doing anything.

EliTTe, if its consistant, I bet you could just pull the needle off, and push it back on so it reads correctly. Not too hard to take apart the cluster, I've done it a couple times.

I think my problem(s) may extend a little deeper, as I can't even use the miles to empty, because it never seems to drop below 200 miles.... I usually just go by the odometer, I can pretty consistantly get 400 miles to a tank, and then I fill up again.

 

achTTung if your car is a quattro then you have to pull both of the sending units and clean the contacts on both, I was having the same problem with it constantly changing(and sometimes staying on full)and after i cleaned the contacts it read fine.

 

You guys know you can perform a gauge sweep with the VAG COM to see if its the cluster that malfunctioning right? You just have to select the instrument cluster (module 17) then do the output diagnosics function and you should see all the gauges sweep from right all the way to the left, then they should all center. If one of the gauges doesn't sweep right the cluster is fvcked.

 

Where are these located?

 

The problem was bad contacts on the fuel sender as suggested above.

I followed this tutorial to remove the sender and clean the contacts: http://public.fotki.com/RoberTT/main...g_fuel_sender/

I only had an hour of daylight left so I chose the passenger side sender first. That seemed to fix the problem. Until I see full range of motion of the gauge, I may have to do the driver's side as well. It was an easy DIY, I'm glad it wasn't the gauge cluster. Thanks for the suggestions!

 

Ha. 30 seconds late! Oh well...

They're in the tank. Pull the seat bottom of the rear seat and you'll see 2 round black covers held down with 3 screws. Under those are the large plastic caps, they unscrew kinda hard, you may need to use a large flat head screwdriver and a hammer to get them started. Drivers side is just fuel sender, pass side is fuel lines and sender.

I didn't do the pass side because I was having trouble disconnecting the fuel lines, didn't have the time to sit and screw with it, and would rather have a malfunctioning gauge than a non-running car due to a broken fuel line fitting.


Make sure you get those caps back tight again after you're done, and also, don't remove them on a full tank of gas. Believe it or not, thats NOT the highest part of the fuel tank. Found that out the hard way.

 

It did take alot of swearing to sort out all the tubes, and even more patience to make sure I didn't break any of them

I was on half a tank, but I still managed to make a mess when I pulled the octopus out. [sm=icon_rofl.gif]