And now, the rest of the story...yesterday I drove the car until I was on E. This afternoon I put it on jackstands, drained the tank which had just over 4 gallons. Mind you, the gauge was on E. I pulled the sending unit, checked the range of travel with an ohm meter. .09 @ full, .76 @ empty. Close enough to the .10 - .73 range it was supposed to be. I then connected the wire, grounded it to the tank, taped the float arm to the E position and watched the gauge, then taped the arm to the F position and watched the gauge. At full F, the gauge only travelled to just over 3/4 position. I bent the arm to get it where it read exactly F and E with the arm in the proper positions. It took a couple of attempts but I got it. At this point I'm feeling pretty good about things. I put the sending unit back in the tank, then I started filling it one gallon at a time. After each gallon I checked the gauge and recorded the position. To make a long story short, it took 4 gallons to get the needle to slightly pass the E mark. Each additional gallon moved the needle closer to the full mark but always to a point less that I would expect with the gallons added to the tank. As I was pouring in the 14th gallon, gas started backing out the filler. I looked down the neck and gas is right there...full as could be. Either there was still gas in the tank when I drained it (the plug was out and the front was lower than the rear) or my tank isn't a 16 gallon tank. At this point the gauge reads barely over the 3/4 mark. I'm really no better off than when I started, except now I know there are almost 4 gallons in the tank when reading E.
I'm not exactly sure what to do at this point other than go through this whole drill again some day except I will bend the arm so in the full F position, the gauge reads way over F. Then maybe it will start registering on the gauge with less gallons and maybe it will move to the F position when full.
What do you make of me only getting 14 gallons in the tank and it being full into the filler neck?