I parked the Dart in the diriveway last night, and after I shut the car off I heard quite a bit of sloshing from the gas tank. The car was not in motion. In fact it had been stopped for a good minute before I shut it off. The sloshing went on for at least a few seconds. What could this be? Do I need to worry about it?

The few times I have filled the car with gas, it has seeped some gas out. You know how you set the trigger on the gas pump and let it go. When it gets full it automatically releases. Well, it automatically releases, but then gasoline seeps out. I didn't think much of it. I just cleaned it off and quit filling it all the way. But, now the sloshing has got me thinking of anything related.

Another thing is that the fuel gauge is inaccurate. When I fill the tank, it only reads half full. Could these other problems be related? What do you all think about it?

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'71 Dart Swinger

Lots of things could be going on. The slanted filler pipe is the culprit in some spillage at fill-ups. Some sloshing after stopping is normal, but the gauge should read better than that. The fuel gauge sender might be going out, or the float might not be floating well. Check the grounding clip at the fuel line and sender, to make sure it has a good connection.
Is your filter catching anything significant?
Sounds like it might be time to pull the sender and clean out the tank. I was amazed at the gallons of grunge that came out of my '64's tank. The float had a leak I couldn't fix, and had to be replaced. All is well back there now.

Sloshing is normal. Modern cars have plastic gas tanks, intricate baffling, and far more sound deadening material between the tank and your ears than your old car does.

Spillage during fill up is also normal. Again, the filler neck angle and baffles have come a long way since then. Like the disclaimer on the pump says, ease up on the nozzle trigger when filling the top portion of the tank to prevent spillage. If in doubt, replace your gas cap. It is possible your vent valve is damaged.

Your gauge will require diagnosis and repair. Probably a skewed sensor or a weak ground, but any portion of the circuit including the float could be to blame. Perform a thorough diagnosis or bring it in for service. Good luck!

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I've been calling it as i see it for my entire life and that's not about to change. Take it or leave it.

At least its normal in my application, so long as it doesn't slosh out the filler cap, you're ok.

Thanks to everyone. It's good to know it's not anything to worry about. I will drop the tank and fix it all up at a later date. I need to drive the car for now, and it's pretty cold outside.

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'71 Dart Swinger

Wow, my status just got upgraded to 4bbl Hyper-pak!!! I guess 26 is the magic number of posts. I feel special.

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'71 Dart Swinger

The sloshing is from the tank not having any baffles in it at all. The tank is just a big cell that holds fuel. The Valiant I had would burp gas every time you filled it up if you ran the fuel too fast. It was worse at some stations than others. I guess it depended on the fuel nozzle on the pump. One thing that would help is to stick that nozzle in the filler tube as far as you could and slow the delivery of the fuel down when the tank started to fill up. As for the gas guage it sounds like you have a float on the sending unit that may have developed a small leak. This lets fuel into it and reduces the bouancy of the float. You can get them from Year One and other places. All you have to do is remove the sending unit from the tank and replace the float and put the sending unit back in. Also if your tempurature and oil guage (if you have a factory one in the cluster) are reading low you may have a bad guage voltage regulator.

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Former bent 6 owner
Mark