The rest of the guages are working fine, but the temp guage is resting just below the first line on it and doesn't move. When I turn on the car however it does jiggle for a moment and then falls back to that position. Is it just loose?

 

might be a good idea to look and see if the wire is loose, broke, or burnt and grounding out. the sender is another possiable cause but it'd be way down on my list of things to check. bad ground for the gauge would also be something to look for.

 

Thats exacly how mine was acting when it turned out to be the sensor. If its unpluged, or not working thats about what it will do. The guage goes up when you start the car because of the guage test. I think the sensor is about $10 from Advance Auto.

Kevin.

 

Okay thanks, now remembering I am an idiot, how do I go about replacing the sensor ^_^ Just pull the guage face out and there it is or what?

 

Don't mess with the gauge itself, it prob works fine. The gauge sensor is in the driver's side head and will have a single wire connector going to it. Drain the driver's side of the block then simply unthread the sensor and rethread the new one in. If ur quick and don't mind a mess, just do the sensor swap and don't mess with the block drain plug. It is a good idea to use some sort of sealing agent on the sensor's threads like teflon tape.

 

yeah i would just go at it and pull the old one and stick the new one in as quick as you can with teflon tape.. good luck

 

IUB,

You can test the gauge by grounding the green/white wire from the sending unit. Grounding the wire with the ignition on should cause the gauge to go to the full HOT end of the scale. If you're lucky, you may find that the wire is only disconnected. It has one of those goofy slide-on terminals, so accidentally pulling it off it very possible.

If you determine that the problem is the sending unit, and you've never flushed the cooling system and/or don't know when it may have been done last (if ever), you might want to flush it now. When you drain it the second time, replace the sending unit for the gauge, then refill the system with the correct coolant mixture.

 

The coolant was just drained and flushed saturday! I paid 40 bucks for that! Where do I find the ground wire?

 

Cryz,

There is no ground wire. There is a single green wire with a white tracer stripe (green/white wire) that is supposed to be connected to the temperature gauge sending unit. The sending unit is threaded into the left (driver's side) cylinder head between the #1 and #3 spark plugs. Disconnect this wire from the sending unit. Insert a short piece of bare/stripped wire into the white connector on the end of the wire, then connect the other end of the bare wire to a good engine ground. Turn on the ignition and obsserve the temperature gauge. If the gauge and gauge wiring are intact, the gauge should indicate a full-scale reading.

 

If your gauge goes off the scale hot and stays there when you turn on the ignition, and the wire is attaced to the sender, is it a good chance that the send is bad? All other gauges work.

thanks,