5520 fuel gauge

Early 5520. Not an antique
Turned key on, fuel guage spiked full circle, wrong side of peg. Pulled wires off sender, held together, turned key on, dial went as far as peg. Opened cluster, moved dial manually past peg and tried again. Same result.
Pulled sender, checked ohms, about 4 - 90 Changed as should when float was moved.
Hate to buy a new cluster. Is there an after market guage compatible with the original sender ?

I remember the guy i bought my 5400 from saying something about the failed fuel gauge being the reason no used clusters were available- so many failed that every one in the salvage yards had been stripped. I am not aware of any aftermarket gauges, I'm sure someone here will. I bought a whole cluster for my salvaged 5500.

Search You Tube for 'gauge stepper motor', it's possible you have a commonly failing stepper motor driving that needle and it's the same issue motor as some of the videos might have. $20 eBay kit will get you four or five new motors. PIA to change them but you were half way there already moving the needle by hand. Your motor will have a number on it - match that number and you are golden if you get the needle on correct. If the needle is full right at the moment then place it in the same position also at full right and spin the needle back into it's normal reading range once it's back on the motor shaft. Under power it should behave for the next few years at least if all the above works out to be as stated above.

Lots of interesting vids. Seems like common problem for GM Not much info online specific to JD. Gotta pull it apart again and see if i can get a number off the stepper motor. Thanks for the input

YW, Your story plus K Effective's testimony on the issue sure sounds like the very same deal with automotive stepper motors to me. I also couldn't find any JD info but it sure is walking just like the same duck as far as I can tell.

94 chevy pickup had a glitch in their early stepper motor systems where the gauge would spin around to the wrong side like yours is now. The computer could read that incident and would light dash lite that states something really stupid message about gauge error. But what you do is just shut it off and that preloads the computer with a reset sequence so the next time you start it up, the computer takes all the needles back to zero position which cures the condition and also turns off the idiot gauge message that nobody understands because it is stupid speaky. You may have this or a similar 'reset sequence' and I can't know how to tap the top of your head three times while rubbing your belly in a clockwise motion while turning on the left turn signal four times with the key on kind of mystical nonsense that some of these computers are actually programmed to accept this exact kind of stupidity to reset a particular function. Only a very experienced JD tech would know of this sekret handshake though, just wanted you to know that such a bizarre thing might exist. For now I can only assume the stepper motor has failed outright, replacing it would be my fix for that and hope it's not a computer error or an easily fixed by reset procedure that I can't know of because JD wants your tractor in their dealership shop.

You may also have some pulled solder joints as the root cause of this issue, surface mount capacitors, resistors and the like can and do break solder joints on modern 'lead free solder' gauge boards causing lights to not function and any number of other issues including a gauge that doesn't read right. More searching on instrument panels will show those videos and the fix is the same shown there, just re-heat the solder with some flux and new solder to rejoin the connection and hope it lasts.

There are outfits that do this work on automotive instrument panels, they will work on other boards at a custom rate, if you feel outclassed by the work required you might want to contact some of those outfits for a possible quote on work required that will have some videos up advertising their services for instrument panel repairs. Best of luck in any case. Let us know what comes of this, the next guy will be helped immensely by your complete story and fix.