[dan fitz]

well, as happens often enough i find myself answering my own problem. called my geo friend in new mexico and he said i may have missed the main ground on the intake manifold under the throttle body, four wires coming into two lugs bolted on the backside. said it was the main ground for lots of things including the ecm and nothing will run without it. thought i had gotten everything back on, no extra bolts sitting around but sure enough i found those wires dangling down in the dark shadows and with a mirror found the shiny spot where they had been attached. not a job for large hands but i found an appropriate bolt, got them on and started right up. of course it ran like shit because i had, in doing the valves, mashed two of the spark plug electrodes down onto their centers, but after fixing that it ran just fine. the misread on the fuel gauge was a good clue that a ground problem existed but on another car i had years ago a bad ground made the fuel gauge go to zero and the temp gauge to superhot; just a different way of wiring, i guess.