Finally got a chance to pull out the pump/sender and test it.
With the pump and sender out of the vchat, and the float all the way up, the guage slowly went to full, as expected.
As soon as I put it back in the guage is bck to ready just below 1/4.....

Could it be that the float isnt "floating"?
I also noticed that the resistor on the sender does seem a little warn.

It does look like the sender can be "unclipped" from the rest of the assembly, so mybe it can be replaced without having to relace then entire pump assembly. Anyone know this for sure?