Alas, today's saga did not end with a successful replacement of the fuel gauge, but we did make progress. We tried using the wrench as suggested from underneath, but to no avail. So, I ran out to Lowe's to get some of the fancy screwdrivers Bill had let us borrow - but shorter - I found two - a 6" that was the same width, and a 4" that was a little smaller. Armed with these, Bean and I were able to get one more of the screws loose, but we had to ask Bill for help again to get the last one moving. This time, he actually climbed down into the spot behind the motor and ended up using an impact screwdriver with a hammer to finally loosen it.
Next step, remove the screws. Now they were all loose, we just had to get them to come out - which of course they didn't actually want to do....
So we used the one flathead under to push up, while using a flat head at the top to turn them. I managed to get three of them out that way, and Bean got a fourth one out, but try as we might we just could not get the fifth one to budge, so we called in reinforcements again. Michael suggested a couple things and we tried them, and then Bill stopped by again to see if he could help. He managed to get the old sender unit out of the hole so we could see what was going on with this screw and found it had a nut on the bottom! The only one that did, no idea why it did, it definitely should not have had a nut. After several unsuccessful attempts to remove it, Bill hit it with a hacksaw. We'll have to try and fish that out at some point so it doesn't clog up our fuel hose - but the screw was out.
Unfortunately, that still didn't quite lead to a win. The threads on the new screws were finer that the original screws, and we missed this in the first pass - so after several unsuccessful attempts to screw in the new unit, we thought the holes were stripped - they probably are now... oops... another lesson learned the hard way.
So, tomorrow, I will climb back in the hole, do a couple checks on ideas Michael gave me, and maybe do a face-time with him to get us moving forward, but for tonight, we are happy to have the old one removed.
On a happier note, we did a face-time with Michael today, which lifted everyone's spirits. We do miss him, and hope to be able to bring him up here in the next few weeks. We are trying to sort out work accommodations for him up here so he could sleep at the boat, but allow us to get work done during the day. Barring that, we may try to find a nice month to month apartment nearer to this (and hopefully less expensive than the one in Corpus Christi).
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