At 08:09 AM 5/29/2012, pickle vanagon wrote:
>tank level sensor can't make the light blink for just a few seconds, even
>if the sensor is malfunctioning?  I.e., that even on a 1.9, the light would
>have to blink for close to 20 seconds before turning off?

I used to know every detail of  the level controller internal circuit
(the old one, the new ones are single chips).  Been a long time
though, and my memory has gotten hazy; and I seem to have mislaid the
schematic I drew.  I *think* that the controller should unlock almost
immediately.  But you can test it yourself: unplug the sender, wait
until it starts blinking, plug it back in and see how long it takes
to stop.  The total flash time will be the controller lock time plus
the internal gauge delay time.  The gauge is supposed to blink for
three seconds every time it's triggered, but as the internal
capacitor deteriorates that time becomes longer and variable.

I'm pretty confident that neither old nor new controller will trigger
without a continuous fault condition lasting a few seconds.

The gauge on the other hand will flash if its input power is
interrupted even momentarily, as that's its bulb-check
function.  I've also seen gauges that will flash continuously if
their input voltage is even slightly below 9.5 V.

If the panel power is flaky I'd expect to probably see a tach drop
just before the flashing started, but it could be very slight (or not
happen at all if the power wasn't completely interrupted).  The tach
doesn't go through the panel voltage regulator, so a momentary
problem there would only show on the temp blinker; as the gauges
respond too slowly to see something like that.

Yrs,
d