Say I was wondering and I hope this is not a dumb question but if you have a bad cooling temp sensor can that cause the car to run poorly like in poor acceleration I have a 92 Z28 TPI 5.7.

 

Not dumb. Yes it can.

The engine's fuel, and to some extent ignition timing, requirements vary according to its temp. Therefore if the ECM is being told that the coolant is at -47° or 278° or some other wacked thing, it can act very ... wacked.

Eeeeeezy and cheeeeeeep enough to just replace it. Although I'm not normally a "just swap it out" kinda guy, in this case, it belongs in the category of "when in doubt swap it out". Not really worth "troubleshooting" since that's harder and more time-consuming, and then after going through all that, you're still at about 95% odds that you'll STILL need to replace it. Might as well skip all that and jump straight to the meat of the matter. Might even want to replace the pigtail at the same time if it looks AT ALL impaired; if so, solder & heat shrink it, NOT just a crimp butt splice.

 

Just curious, is the check engine light on? Or has it been on?

 

Hey red rock yeah the check engine light is on its been on sense I got the car 4 months ago been trying to fix all the messed up crap that had be done the car.

 

Thanks for the info sofakingdom that is a good point its a cheap part anyway won't hurt to just replace it.

 

I think it would be a good idea to get any codes from the computer to help diagnose any problems.

 

Get a paper clip and get those codes lol

 

Yeah that's a good idea I got a paper clip lol.

 

Incase you need directions
https://www.2carpros.com/articles/bu...trieval-method

 

Thanks for the info. I'm going to give it a try.

 

Well I just replaced the cooling temp sensor . I'm not sure if the old was working or not but when I took it out the plastic housing around the two pins broke and the wire plug to the sensor looks alright . But we'll see how it go's . Anyways thanks guys for all the info.

 

Pulling the codes is always a good idea, if the light is on. But not all problems will set a code. The sensor has to be telling the ECM something that it can be programmed to know, is blatantly impossible. For example: RPM low, TPS says wide open, vacuum is high (MAP low). It's physically impossible for those 3 things to happen at the same time. Faced with that, the ECM just has to make a guess which one doesn't fit the others. In the case of the coolant temp, if the ECM doesn't see the temp reach some reasonable value (120° or some such) within about 5 minutes of running, it knows something is wrong. Even if it's -30° out, the engine should warm up. If it doesn't see that, that is if the sensor continues to report a cold condition, it can reasonably infer that the sensor is lying. It's much tougher if the sensor reports a warm condition; the ECM has no way to know that that's a lie.

 

That's a good point I guess the ECM can only read what it told .