Hallo Michael,

you wrote:

I do not recall if the +BATT was applied at the tank end or at the meter end.

I think, everything next to the tank is connected to chassis ground. For safety purpose! The meter is connected to +12V, sometimes via a voltage regulator, to overcome any negative effect resulting from changes of battery voltage. So it is with my old golf I cabrio made in 1985.

I asked myself, why not an inductive methode was used for displaying according data. This would be much quicker and would show much less current consumption. But: When routing a cable inside a cable bundle, which can carry high and fast switched-on currents, remember the brake lamp for instance, then a sensible, inductively working meter would suffer from interferrence, I guess. Another possible reason is, that the reading of any meter in cockpit must not be degraded by vibrations of the whole car. So, although needing lots of power, meters using a heating element are rather helpful. Or, it's just tradition why they were used for so long time...

By the way, Farshid should be a bit more careful, if a too high current will flow through his tank sensor. It's the right time to focuse that fuel is pretty much explosive from time to time....

I'm not sure, but could the meter winding have a temperature coefficient like a PTC? In this case he would always measure a wrong (too low) meter resistance with a DVM only. So, reducing the current through his tank sensor seems to solve the problem.

Bye,
Kai