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About a week ago the "Check Engine Temp" light came on, it's always on and still won't go off. My temp gauge works, and has not got out of the normal range. I check the coolant level and it's fine.
My 1993 truck has 2 sensors on the engine. One goes right to the gage on the dash and never sees the computer. The other goes right to the computer with the computer having an output to the light on the dash.
Your truck might be different. I'm pretty sure 1983 had EEC-3 computers. But the concept should be similar.
So I would suspect your engine is not overheating since the gage checks OK but the other sensor could be bad. This might cause other issues too like running in open loop contrl (not using O2 sensors) since the computer wants to know the engine is warmed up before it will allow closed loop operation.
well since the 83 has no computer id say it has 2 sensors 1 for the gauge and 1 for the light on a 7.3 1 is on the drivewrs side head above the manifole and the other os on the pass side fron of the head on my 7.3 the one on the drivers side works the gauge and the otherif for the computer if i were you id chevk the one on the pass side head
Two sending units on the drivers side front of the engine.
The one in the block under the AC compressor is for the gauge.
The one in the head in front of the exhaust manifold is for the light.
The other sending unit under the alternator is for the fast idle and timing advance for cold starts.
The only thing on an IDI that resembles a computer is the transmission control for an A4OD transmission. There is no computer that has anything to do with the motor.