Sweating the fuel gauge

[RKins]

My fuel gauge was very flaky when we bought the coach. Was great below half but intermittent above - very frustrating. I tried to find a replacement sending unit but couldn't. Discontinued. Finally at the Tampa RV super show I talked to the parts manager of Spartan and explained this frustration and he jumped on his computer and then made a call and found that they sell their old/discontinued stock to a company that resells it (and not cheap either). So he gave me the website and I found one - yay.
The sender is mounted on the side of the 150 gal tank and since I keep the tank above half, where the sending unit was flaky. I had to take long drives trying to get the diesel level below half. Then the mounting bolts were rusted in place - took a lot of finagling and special tools (like a piece of oak to apply pressure to the breaker bar from frame with special adapter and philips bit) to break them loose without stripping. Finally got that done and replaced. The new sending unit /gauge is spot on to what is in the tank. We drive around 300 miles per day, which translates to a 1/4 tank. So we get two 300 mile trips/leg before we hit 1/2 and look for a fuel station. I can look at the gauge and be pretty close to how much fuel it'll take.