Got back from the beach yesterday and decided to turn loose on the 4runner to finally fix the TSB EL010 fuel gauge problem. Actually we drove the Runner to the beach and that thing would drive me crazy!! (Good thing it's the wife's daily driver!)

It had the normal characteristics I guess- fill it up and about 15 miles later it read 3/4 of a tank, even when completely full it would never reach the full mark, the low fuel light would come on and the gauge would read empty with 3-4 gallons still in the tank, etc.

I started dropping the tank around 4pm yesterday and was finished by 7pm. It appears to be fixed although I haven't driven it enough to tell for sure, when I got finished with it I drove down to Enmark to fill it up and when I started it back up after filling it the darn needle shot up to ful so fast I though it was going to break! I've never owned a Toyota that sprung up to "F" right away, usually they go up to about 3/4 pretty quick, then slowly climb up past full. This one flies up to full. It also reads beyond the full mark now which it never did before. So I've got my fingers crossed for what it will do as I start to use some of the gas.

The cheapest price I got from a Toyota dealer to do this was $337.00 and I came in at about $170.00 parts and did the labor myself. To all of you with this problem who simply reset the trip odometer to watch fuel consumption I really encourage you to do what I did and replace everything. It really wasn't that hard and the benefits will be well worth it. Keep in mind though mine didn't need any of the work in the dash done. I consider myself lucky as I'm sure that could get much more involved.

 

did you find a writeup on how to do it, cause my gauge is a bit off too.
thanks

 

No, there was no write up that I could find. I had gotten a copy of the TSB from phorunner.com and on it were some rough instructions for the Toyota mechanics to use when performing the work. I just used that and the Haynes manual.