To the best of my (limited) knowledge, early style fuel tanks had the cylinder type fuel sender and an instrument cluster / fuel gauge that looked like this: and then later fuel tanks (mines a ‘74 and has this later type) have a swing floatation arm type sender, and a dash cluster /fuel gauge that looked like this: I may well be wrong! I’d hazard a guess with yours being a 72, it’ll be the early type even so.
Awww shucks, now I’m all embarrassed! Actually I’m not entirely right, as the picture of the late dash pod appears to offer a red warning light of G&T, where sadly I’m sure mine offers Oil.
It’s a Cat Warning (Katzewarnungsgeraet), in case one runs out into the road in front of you. Will also detect Senior Citizens, I believe.
Well…… my Feb ‘73 (type4) has the earlier gauge but a lever-type sensor and a 60 litre tank I believe. (Gauge was always pretty hopeless and came without a stabilizer, but fitting one rendered it useless. Then it packed up altogether when the contacts loosened and shorted out so it’s purely ornamental now). As for putting super in to keep e5, I’ve been buying that stuff for my other cars for years but I can’t believe the price it’s at now. Reckon now there’s a captive market it will continue to get more expensive still… I might look into whether it’s worth keeping a bottle of additive just in case, but presumed that it can’t change the ethanol content so won’t actually make any difference to potential pipe damage? All mine are fairly recent and I think resistant to some ethanol content from memory, but what standard I don’t recall. Better check…
As I understand it, the earlier moving-coil type gauges don’t need a stabiliser, and fitting might make it go barmy - as you’ve found. The late gauges are heavily damped but I believe the tube type sender does the damping on earlier ones. An odd match is unlikely to work.
Damped it most certainly wasn’t! At least in my ownership! Anyway replaced with something else now. My gripe with super today when I tried to fill the bus tank was that the pump would only give me £5.19 worth before it ran out. All the other pumps were busy so I went on my way with about an extra 10 miles worth of fuel at today’s prices. The next station I went to fill up again and found I’d chosen the ‘Pay at pump’ lane which wouldn’t take my phone contactless payment so another pump was required. I don’t get out much!
