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The sending unit for the temp gauge should be right beside the distributor screwed into the intake manifold. It will have one single wire on it, a red/white stripe wire. If you find it, you can turn the key on, take the wire off the sending unit, and ground the wire to the engine block. The temp gauge should swing full scale hot or cold. Then take the wire off ground and the gauge will swing full scale the opposite direction. If it passes this test, the gauge and the wire are good.
The sending unit for the temp gauge should be right beside the distributor screwed into the intake manifold. It will have one single wire on it, a red/white stripe wire. If you find it, you can turn the key on, take the wire off the sending unit, and ground the wire to the engine block. The temp gauge should swing full scale hot or cold. Then take the wire off ground and the gauge will swing full scale the opposite direction. If it passes this test, the gauge and the wire are good.
It's important to have a good clean and tight connection to the sender. If its loose and dirty it can affect the reading.
Temp sensor, here's mine from a few years back. The yellow thing in the upper right corner is the oil fill cap. Temp sensor is in intake manifold between #5 & 6 cylinders.
Make sure your's doesn't have teflon tape on the threads.
When you get it fixed, the gauge will rise above/to the right of the center. When the T stat opens, the needle will drop back to just the left of center.
Mine will go beyond the horizontal lines on that symbol on the gauge before dropping back.
It's important to have a good clean and tight connection to the sender. If its loose and dirty it can affect the reading.
It's also important to have a good ground at the sensor. Use very little sealer or thread tape on the sender to seal it, it grounds itself through the threads of the sensor.
It's also important to have a good ground at the sensor. Use very little sealer or thread tape on the sender to seal it, it grounds itself through the threads of the sensor.
The sending unit comes with a sealant coating. Add nothing to it. Just thread it in and snug it well. Hook up the wire. Done.
So i did the test grounding out the wire it barley moved
Where did you ground the wire? Did you touch it to the body of the temperature sender? If so, the sender itself may not be well grounded. That would account for the gauge barely working when connected normally and when the wire was grounded for testing.
I don't think the gauge itself is likely to be bad. They are pretty robust and lead a sheltered life inside the dash. And it did move a little bit, so that tells us it is not completely dead.
There is an Instrument Voltage Regulator (IVR) in the dash that powers the gauges. I see your fuel gauge appears to be working, so the IVR should be good.
I wonder if it's time for a compression test ? Or see if the auto parts store will rent you a HC tester for the cooling system. It's a sensor that you wave over the open radiator while engine is running.
So the fuel gauge works kinda.. it does have full range of motion and it does move but just last night it was reading full but took $50 of gas to fill up the tank.
I’m going to check fuses then probably buy a new sender. Before I even spend the money on that though, should I get the coolant system test and compression test done?
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