So, as everybody can see from the above post by Lanval, the shop who installed my rebuilt engine two years ago not only reused my old TS II sender--which is excusable enough-- but also managed to cross-thread the living hell out of it when they reinstalled it in my BRAND NEW heads.
Lanval and I weren't so excited when we discovered this, and we spent a good hour or two wondering "what to do". At this point, the old sender was already destroyed in the removal process (the wire snapped off, not to mention that the threads were completely thrashed), and we figured that re-tapping the hole would be a no-no since then the sender would definitely be too small to fit after doing that procedure. Left without many options, I went to cry in the corner (well, not really, but I wanted to) while Lanval left a quick message with Colin asking for advice.
Eventually, I just said "the hell with it", and decided that we may as well see if we can just thread the new TS II into the bungled hole and hope that it: a) goes in, and b) is tight enough to function correctly. The heads are pretty soft, so I didn't have too much trouble just ratcheting the new sender in. We were both worried about stripping the threads on the head further and making it non-functional, but after getting the sender torqued down I thought that it was "pretty good"--pretty good meaning it was relatively tight and seemed to be seated okay. I got some good advice from Lanval and used his handy shop vac to clean out the hole of any small metal shavings before we attempted to install the sender. Also, Lanval had the brilliant idea to zip-tie up the wire on the sender so we could fit it into the socket without mangling the wire like I did with the old sender.
I wasn't overly optimistic this would all work out well, but I fired up the van and we took it on a 20 minute test drive. The good news is that the sender remained solidly in place, and it also DID seem to solve my stumbling issue, at least so far...
We'll see how everything holds up. So, was this all a terrible idea? Should I be worried about this solution, or just assume it's good to go at least until I need to instal another TS II (which is hopefully NEVER). Should we have done something differently? Hopefully not, since what's done is pretty much done now.
And, what is the lesson in all of this? Don't let a shop do any work for you! After paying too much money for a rebuilt type IV, I would expect them to at least, you know, not completely screw up by brand new head. Is that too much to ask? Sheesh.
