UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

My son has a 2003 Polo E and the fuel gauge does not work.
I have had the sender out and put a multimeter on the terminals and it reads 50ohms when full and 288ohm when empty, which from my research is about right.
I then took the instrument pod out and did a continuity check from the multi-pin connector (pins 32 & 15 from memory) back to the sender connector and it was fine, the tank is fairly full at the moment and the reading is about 60ohms, I also got this across pins 32 & 15 when I re-connected the sender.
I did notice that when you turn on the ignition the fuel gauge needle moves about 1mm and when you turn the ignition off again it drops again.
I there any thing else I can check?

Cheers.

Dry solder joints on the instrument cluster can cause his. Reflowing the main connector pins works for most issues. There's a variety of posts on here about it

A bit of an update, my son came home last night and said that he has a red light on the dash and the cars beeping.
I had a look and the oil light is flashing with 3 beeps, the car does not have an owners manual, but from what I can gather, it means low oil pressure. I checked the oil level and its fine, I asked him if it was rattling etc and he said it was fine. So I started it and it ticked over fine, but the oil light came on.
As the fuel gauge does not work and now with the above problem, could it be the instrument cluster is finally packing up totally?
I know I can get a second hand cluster but can I re-program it myself or is it a dealer job, if so how much do you think it would cost?

I would try reflowing the joints first - this fixes 99% of issues on these clusters and its becoming more and more common

RUM4HO has done a couple of posts on the procedure

There's a known problem within the ECU relating to the dashboard, perhaps a diagnostic check up would confirm such a thing!