Thanks Geezer. Here’s an update on my end. I pulled my gage from the instrument cluster to get access. I first kept the two wire connection “as is” on the back of the gage with no results. I then switch the hot and sender wires on the back of the gage. The gage was hanging sideways from the wires below the instrument cluster, and as a result, the needle was showing in the middle of the range with no power. The needle seems to move freely, depending on how the gage is rotated and has a tendency to be in a 9 o’clock position naturally so as you rotate the actual gage around physically, the needle again will show a horizontal position. I pulled the sender from the motor. Once power was turned on, and a simulated grounding to the sender with the sendor wire connected from the gage to the sendor, the needle moved to the right. When I up righted the gage to it’s normal viewing position, the needle was pegged to the left, almost like the entire gage is mis-aligned, or the resistance is too high?
I purchased a few resistors. #1 measures 10 ohms, #2 measures 119 ohms and a third #3 reistor measures .295 K ohms. Now, I tried to put the three resistors in line one by one to see the effect. I pigtailed the resistor to the lead on the sender. Then connected the sender wire from the gage to the resistor. I tried all three above, and #1 did not change the overall needle movement from the “un-resistored” sender. #2 changed the needle movement to ½ the previous movement (meaning the needle moved 1/8” vs. 1/4"”) and the #3 changed the needle even less. What does that mean??
So, I believe the gage is working, and the sender is working, it’s just the resistance must be so high to start that it does not even register.
One more note, I did heat up some water, dropped the sender in, and the checked it against a cold sender installed. There was a larger needle movement on the heated sender than the cold (meaning, the needle moved another 1/16 -1/8” ). Makes sense, but the needle movement was in my opinion slight. Meaning, the needle only moved about a ¼” at its tip while just the sender was installed (again, while the gage was on its side allowing the needle to start off in the gage range of view.)
Any thoughts on where I am, and what I should do next?
