Fuel Gauge Rebuild, King Seeley

[midman]

Working on a rolling resto of my 31 Buick I turned to the instrument cluster and the heavily corroded King Seeley liquid fuel gauge. You can buy the replacement fluid and tubing but the old fluid corroded the mounting flange, the gauge face, and mounting plate, and the glass tube and brass cylinder were completely plugged with dried fluid. I found an earlier post here on clearing the old fluid (muiric acid bath).

So after buying what I could ,I found a donor mounting plate, tack welded a face mounting flange I made as close as I could guess, and scanned the old gauge face into my computer. I painstakingly cleared the face of corrosion damage in Photoshop and redrew the characters where I had to, then selected just the gauge face characters and printed them on decal transfer paper. I prepped and painted the donor face and applied the decal to the face, and finally clear coated the face. It didn't come out perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than it was.

Hopefully the new fluid is not corrosive!

[ArticiferTom]

I'm working on my gages right now . It's hard to believe the hours you can put in  to it . I  would call that face plate perfect .

 I have been using that evapo- rust . Suppose to remove only rust not paint . It only failed me once as the rust was under the paint so everything came off a license plate I was doing. I repainted inner divider but no face plates that have writing . I did remove all paint someone sprayed on bezels and re nickeled . I had electro- kit from years ago . Came out good on the brass ,fair on the zinc .

 

                                            Good Job!   Tom

[Friartuck]

King Seeley parts and service is available from Classic and Exotic Service: http://www.classicandexotic.com/store/c-85-king-seeley-hobson-fuel-gauge.aspx

 

You can also purchase fluid at Early Ford V-8 suppliers such as MAC's Auto Parts. Hydrostatic gauges were used on 32-35 Fords.