Fuel Guage Stick

[Flyhound]

I've never trusted the analog fuel gauges in my plane, and a couple of fuel leaks in the hangar made me distrust the fuel quantity shown on my JPI fuel totalizer, so I've always verified the quantity of fuel on board with one of those fuel gauge sticks. It takes a bit of effort to calibrate it initially by slowly adding fuel to the tank and measuring the level on the stick, but once that is done it is an excellent means of assuring the fuel you think you have is matched by the fuel you actually have in the tanks. It's always worked well for me until about a week ago. I clumsily dropped the fuel stick and it managed to slide all the way into the tank, and then roll to the back of the tank! Arghhhhhh! I finally got it out by jacking the tail up to slightly above level flight attitude (be careful that the plane doesn't nose over) and then fishing for the #@%^ thing with a long bit of welding wire. After about a full day of blindly hunting in the dark, I got the darned thing right under the fill cap and was able to extract it with a "grabber". Now my fuel stick has a lanyard tied and epoxied to it and it'll never be lost in the tank again. If you use one of these puppies, attaching a lanyard could save a day of discouraging words...

[Kirk]

The lanyard is a very good idea. One that I’ve been thinking about doing for a bit over 20 years now…

[Andy Young]

Or just make your stick long enough that it can’t slide into the tank.

[andy]

After losing one of those clear acrylic ones in my tank in 20 degree weather, I came to the same conclusion as Andy Young. It took me 3 hours to get the gauge out of the trailing edge end of the tank. After that I got a 36" oak dowel from Lowes and put permanent marker ticks at 5 gallon intervals. Draining the main tanks into new 5-gallon vinyl gas cans took some doing so I could calibrate the dowel.

[Rezrider]

But think of all those new swear words you came up with!

[Flyhound]

Or just make your stick long enough that it can’t slide into the tank.

That isn't as simple as it sounds. The width of the fuel tank opening combined with the depth of the tank will allow the tank to swallow a pretty darned long stick sliding in at an angle. The 3' dowel that Andy mentioned would do the trick, but I don't have any interest in wrangling a 3' stick just to check my tank level. A piece of string is much more portable and achieves the same result. Besides, I had a lot of string in the hangar, but no 3' dowels...In any case, I never want to go fishing for one of these again. The new swear words I learned weren't enough of a reward for the frustration encountered.

[Andy Young]

Or just make your stick long enough that it can’t slide into the tank.

That isn't as simple as it sounds. The width of the fuel tank opening combined with the depth of the tank will allow the tank to swallow a pretty darned long stick sliding in at an angle. The 3' dowel that Andy mentioned would do the trick, but I don't have any interest in wrangling a 3' stick just to check my tank level. A piece of string is much more portable and achieves the same result. Besides, I had a lot of string in the hangar, but no 3' dowels...In any case, I never want to go fishing for one of these again. The new swear words I learned weren't enough of a reward for the frustration encountered.

Actually, it doesn’t need to be as long as you’re probably thinking. I just took a measurement on my plane, pushing a 1/2” diameter plastic tube as far in and as far back as I could. It turns out that a 13 inch length is adequate to make sure that you cannot insert it all the way into the fuel tank. This is on an M-6. Individual tanks may vary slightly, but it won’t be by much.