Introduction and few questions

[uk525td]

Good afternoon, im the proud owner of my e34 td for just over two years, through which time she has cost me an arm and a leg to maintain!!! I try to do most jobs myself but i have a few ongoing questions i would like pointing in hte right direction.

Fuel Gauge, seems to be on empty when sat in the 50% position, car takes 45 litres of diesel roughly to fill her up, for which she does approx 350 miles mixed driving 9 ichipped her with a cheap ebay chip sometime agao which may have hurt the fuel economy pretty bad but i dont recall).
How do i adjust/calibrate/replace the gauge or sender?!?! and what kind of milage do
other td drivers get to a tank?
The service gauge doesnt ever seem to change..... and certain pixels/lights/numbers on the display work intermittently, usually when the car has been parked over night.
Rattles and clunks...... I have replaced the thrust arms, and thrust arm bushes with uprated poly bushes, and the a?? arms with the aluminium items available from ebay. some 6 months later (10k?? miles)the MOT inspector told me one of the bushes was shot on the arm.. and sure enough it was.......is it common to burn through these parts? any other recommendations for the clunks? they all sound front endy, one form the drivers side, a clunk/rattle has been htere since i bought the car, every time i hit a small bump, the left hand side is new and appears very quiet and only hearable at low speed. Originally she was eating front tyres for a hobby, it seems to be better now touch wood...

I love the car, theway it drives and the adequate (chipped) performance and i dont think its ecenomical to sell.... id liek to keep it and upgrade it over time.
thanks for any advice.

[zubbie]

Welcome. I don't have a lot of answers but a few to get you started.

As far as your suspension stuff goes I would steer clear of the Ebay stuff. No surprise it failed so early. Lemforder oem is the only option in my mind. Your experience is common.

I would probably offer the same comment on the eBay chip. Some are good, some are not.

Hopefully others here will help you with your gas guage issue.

[HausBimmer]

The fuel gauge is typically a float in the trunk (boot?) and comes out with the fuel pump (at least on gas cars - only a few 524td of the e28 variety made it to the US). The float lever can stick and cause errant readings. You can look up the "capacitor fix" on the e34 board to see if that helps your instrument cluster or try to find a replacement from a junkyard - these clusters have a coding chip that you need to change if you change the cluster. On the front ends, I just keep replacing all the components, starting with the loosest (most loose?) until the noises go away and that can be a bunch of parts if the dreaded PO was a slacker.

[uk525td]

Thankyou for the replies, i suspected there was no easy solution to the rattles and clunks...
Ok fuel gauge..... i thought a bout a stuck float, however.... if the float was getting stuck i would have half a tank of fuel remaining once the gauge got to half way position, however it seems i am on fumes at this point, so i wondered if there was any other way of testing the sender/gauge??? could the gauge be out due to these capacitor issues? ill have to get some bits ordered to fix the cluster i htink.

On another note, prompted by another poster, i have decided to try running on vegetable oil, ive bought a heat exchanger/pre heater and paln to install it and try running on 80/20 oil/diesel :)