I have a DiPricol temp gauge and I am pretty sure the sending unit is going bad. Once it gets over 180 it jumps to 220 and occasionally pegs, but the truck does not seem to be overheating. The EOT stays between 195 and 208. A laser temp gun on my coolant filter shows 10 degrees cooler than the gauge reads at hot idle.


Problem is, Dipricol closed it's doors a few years ago. So I am wondering how to find a sending unit that will work with my gauge, or if I will need to just replace everything. Does anyone know just how universal temperature senders are, if at all?

 

DiPricol gauges here too, so I'm curious if anyone knows.

Stewart

 

Well I changed the thermostat and 2 months and 2,500 miles later it has not acted up. I suspect my thermostat was sticking. I have a coolant filter which is fed by a small hose from the bypass on the engine side of the thermostat. The diPricol sending unit is in the filter head right where the bypass hose feeds coolant into the filter. So I think hot coolant was hitting the sender while the stat was closed. I have the 203 stat. My next project will be to move the diPricol sender to the engine block.

 

There is a spot for the sender on the pass front of the head, may try that.

As far ss replacement sender, you could back into the range of the sensor if you boil a cup of water and take temp using known thermometer and measure then with sensor and gauge. If they match, get the resistance. Do the same with a few other temperatures (within range of gauge) and you can then find a different thermistor with the same resistance/temperature correlations.

 

You can heat shrink the terminal on your sensor too if you want... It looks to be unshrunk