It's my old friend the temp gauge

[schueymcfee]

Trying to finally beat this problem that occured a while back - basically the temp gauage is always at max, way past red as soon as I turn on the ignition.

I have replace the temp sensor (one spade connector) and when I disconnect the sensor the gauge reads 0, what can I do to find the problem?

[Cider Andy]

It sounds like the wire between the gauge and the sender is shorted to earth. Or the gauge itself is at fault. A multimeter will tell you if there's continuity between the sender wire and ground.

[schueymcfee]

Cider Andy said:

It sounds like the wire between the gauge and the sender is shorted to earth. Or the gauge itself is at fault. A multimeter will tell you if there's continuity between the sender wire and ground.

Where do I put the Multimemter red wire and the black? Red on the spade terminal and black on the block?

I think there is definitley an earthing issue as my oil pressure gauge reads 15psi when the engine is off!

If it's an earthing issue how do you go about combating it?

Cheers

[mdotrutherford]

Yes that will do. When reading continuity - meter set at Ohms - it does not matter which way round the wires are.
I would give the wire some gentle movement in all directions to see if the meter reading changes, as Andy said sounds
like a direct short to earth at a chafe somewhere.

ON the general ground theme, I recently cleaned my point up on the front offside chassis point - the changes in general
gauges etc was a great improvement.
Brgds
Ian

[blueyonder]

I had a problem with my temp gauge this weekend! The needle was flicking around between 70 and 90 degrees and at one point decided to stick at 75 degrees, not budging even though I was in standing traffic on the motorway in Saturday's heat with the fans kicking in! What could be causing it, dodgy connection or temp sender on it's way out? Any way of finding out?

At least the fans did their job and she didn't overheat, which was reassuring!!