Gas Guage

My Gas Gauge said i was almost empty so i go fill up and i only filled 5 gallons of my 25. K my gauge is broke right. Assuming it's the float I go see how much a shop will charge to fix it. They say $250 so i was gana fix it when i got my next pay check. Then i'm drivin home from work and it started readin again. I wanted to see if it was workin so i put $5.00 in and it freaked out. It went from 1/8 a tank to 3/8 then to 1/4 and i was like it's just fucked. But then when i got home and turned off my car it didn't drop like gauges do when your car goes off. Is it the gauge or float because the shop said they would just replace Both. If you have any clue please help me before i pay the money to replace the float if i only have to replace the gauge because i can do that.

On my old Shadow, the guage hasn't read properly in a few years. All I do is fill up the tank, reset the odometer and keep an eye on it. I can go about 320 on a tank so when it get in the 270+ range, I stop and fill it up.

If you need to have the readings then just replace the guage yourself and see what happens. If it reads properly then you're done. If it doesn't, put the old gauge back in and return the one you bought. Then go and get the float replaced and tell them that is all you want done.