AWR-fix: e53 Fuel pump / siphon pump details

[scourtaud23]

Hi to all,



I've done my timing guides, it was a pain but its done and runs beautifully so I decided to take a look at that fuel sender.


What I did was take out the fuel pump and having the tank low on fuel, I used my iphone and is flash photography to take a picture of the offending fuel sender in situ :





As you can see its correctly seated but the plastic holder is broken and the sender is hung up (I'm guessing on a broken resistor plate).


The only explanation I can find is that my tank vent valve leaks under the engine's vaccume and this compresses the tank...



Is there anything else that pulls vaccume from the tank or would explain compression?


I'm thinking my only way of testing my theory would be to change the sender and unplug the vent hose before the pump. is there any other way?


Of course I'm very open to ideas, if anyone opens their sender unit, I'd be interested of knowing the distance from the rim to the bottom of the "bump" on a tank that doesn't eat its sender units, maybe even the distance from two points (towards the center of the car and towards the door) of the rim to their respective sides of the bump to see if my tank is deformed for ever or not.


Thanks for the help.