Alfa 156 owners - what does your fuel gauge say?

[Anth73]

Hoping someone can demystify something for me. My recently acquire Alfa 156 V6 is a 2002 update with white-faced  instrumnet dials. The fuel gauge does not have "benzina" written on it as per every other 156 I can recall. Mine has "JTD" written on it, which is Alfa-speak for "jet thrust diesel".

I checked the owners manual and it shows diesel versions having "JTD" written on the fuel guage, all others have "benzina" written. From what I know the diesel 156 was never sold in Australia, so how did a "JTD" fuel gauge end up in my petrol 156 V6? It reads correctly though as all tanks are 63 litres.

What has your fuel guage written on it?

[Anth73]

No responses on the forum so I thought I'd email Alfa support, who were kind enough to give me a call...thanks Adam.

After a couple of discussions and a few photos sent to them of the offending gauge, all the cars details match their records and they confirmed with Alfa Italia that the fuel gauge was never replaced under warranty.

So the likely scenarios are:
1. The previous owner needed to replace the original fuel gauge for some reason after the warrant expired in Feb 2006 and bought a JTD version somewhere overseas (eBay?), fitted it himself, without marking any of the dash. Given that the car was serviced every 6 months at Alfa Italia, this seems unlikely.

2. On the particular day my car was made the factory ran out of "benzina" fuel gauges and simply fitted JTD versions so as not to hold up production. Given the car was manufactured in April 2002, it would have been one of the earlier series 2 update cars made that were launched in August that year. So chances are I have a very unique factory Alfa with an equally unique factory glitch! Trust the Italians! I'm one after all....I can hear the supervisor saying "Ma, non fa niente" on the factory floor to the production line workers who raised the problem. 

[a sharp]

Anthony
I would go for #2, this is a fine Alfa practice and its good to see the old ways haven't passed completely into history.  Some of the first RHD 2L Affetta GTV's (april 77) came with GT dashes (no fake wood triming), I own one of these cars built 6/4/77 oddly enought the chassis either side of it by number had the right dashes as these cars went on to become the Bennica sports sedan, and the Peter Jones road reg race car and all three where bulit on the same day.