Temperature Gauge

[95TransAm]

A good friend of mine has a project 84 firebird. He's put a 350 crate in it, cam, intake, full exhaust, other bolt ons, no computers whatsoever. Anywho, we've made several attempts at this, as well as a couple technicians he works with, and no one can figure this one out.

Since day one he had the car, his temp gauge hasn't worked. It has power, its grounded, its hooked up properly, it just doesn't work. So a while back, he bought a 3 gauge cluster that he incorporated into his dash, and one is a temp gauge. So, we hooked everything up, and once again it gets power, is grounded out, and the temp sensor is hooked up properly, but it just doesn't work The other two gauges work (oil pressure and volts), but the temp doesn't. So basically, he currently has two temp gauges in his car, one being brand spankin new, and nothing works. All wires are fine cause like i said, they came brand new with the gauge.

Any ideas on this one?

[Jeff_in_Atl]

Did he use teflon tape on the threads of the sender? If he grounds the wire that goes to the sensor, does the gage peg?

[TraceZ]

I'd replace the sender. It's cheap enough.

I've installed senders with teflon tape, and they worked fine. In fact, just this last summer when I was replcing my exhaust gaskets I broke my sender off and had to replace it. I used teflon tape. no problem.

[Injuneer]

Nowhere do you mention checking the sensor. You can check the temp sensor with an ohm meter, while its still in the engine. Between the block and the pin on the sensor (no wire connected), you should see numbers like:

32degF - 9,420 ohms
68degF - 3,530 ohms
104degF - 1,459 ohms
140degF - 667 ohms
176degF - 332 ohms
212degF - 177 ohms

[95TransAm]

I'm 99.9% sure that the sender is replaced as well. I'm pretty sure it came with his new gauges, but i could be wrong. He obviously works on his car more than i do, so I'm not sure if he has tested the sender. I know for a fact i wasn't there when the sender was tested. As for teflon tape, once again i'm not 100 percent positive, but to the best of my knowledge he did use it.

Jeff, the gauge itself though does nothing, no matter what we do, it doesn't peg at all. But, that was with his stock temp gauge. I'm not sure what happens with his new one being i've only helped him once with it and that was when he installed it; and my task was oil pressure and hooking it up to his dash lights.

Fred, thanks for that info. He blew an intake gasket yesterday, so i know today i was going to help him out with that. I will make sure to mention to him to test the sensor just like you said, and we'll see what happens.

Thanks for all the input as always, and i'll keep you guys posted tomorrow after we try everything out later on tonight.

[redws6]

you gottta love the stupid little problems.

[95TransAm]

A little update....

I found out that no teflon tape has been used.

We are in the process of changing a lot of gaskets, a head gasket, intake gasket, and his timing chain cover is leaking a bit as well. We finished all of this and put everything back together, but being that his coolant mixed into his oil due to the intake gasket, we decided to let his "sludge" drip out for the night. After we do a motor flush and get everything back and working, we'll test the ohms when we start it up.

We did test it though when it was cold, and got a reading of i believe 6,600 or somewhere around that. Hopefully we'll be able to fix that problem, and i'll post our results as they come.

[95TransAm]

Another update...

We finally did all the gaskets and what not, and got her up and running really nice. It basically came down to replacing the sensor. The temp gauge works now, but the darned gauge tends to jump around for some reason. It's not that bad though, gets you close enough to knowing what the temp is I suppose. Better than not having a gauge though.

Thanks again guys