Hi, Asad, What a great story you have started on the rescue of the old UNICEF car! We are all going to be watching the continuing drama of trying to restore it to life. It would really be a challenge to get it back to the condition it was in when it was imported!
The electrical (not electronic) fuel gauge was a Hella aftermarket item that was available from the late 1950s on. The kit (I bought one in Germany for my 1961 beetle) came with a new grill that was pre-cut for the square gauge, a new pad to fit behind the grill, and was primed and ready for paint. I used a spray can of VW Pearl White touch-up paint and it was a beautiful match. The gauge looked almost exactly like the VDO gauge that the factory began installing on the mid-1961 models (1962 for the USA market), though the markings were slightly different. It came with a tank float sensor unit that one installed down the filler neck of the fuel tank. The instructions gave the exact locations where holes needed to be bored in the neck to assure that the float reached the correct point inside the tank. The tank float swivel actually had a little rheostat so the changing fuel level changed the potential to ground; the wire to the dashboard gauge was thus a variable grounding wire. The gauge was illuminated with the usual VDO lightbulb, and a gray wire tied it into the instrument lights. It is possible that the Aussie factory offered this as an option even before the Germans did. Does anybody know? Bert Knupp in Music City USA _______________________________________________ vintagvw site list [email protected] http://lists.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vintagvw
