The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay @!*#$ BEEPING pegging temp gauge!

Help!

New temp gauge. New Sender Unit. Temp gauge needle still swings 360 degrees past hot to jam up against the needle stop. Requiring me to take the dash out. Pull the temp gauge. Spin needle back around to where is should rest on the other side of the needle stop.

The new gauge is from Chevy Duty. After having me "reverse wires" (which I did until smoke started coming out of the dash) they told me to buy a new sender unit. Bought it. Still same problem.

I don't have the original pink ignition wire for the gauge so I spliced into another pink wire from the ignition. Is it possible to be spliced into the wrong power wire?

This is on a 1959 3800 Chevy. I've even tried a voltage reducer on the chance chevy duty sent me a 6 volt gauge. I'm at my wits end and almost fed up with my old truck.

Has anybody ever experienced this or have advice?

Appreciate it.
Thanks,
Jacob

Sounds like a bad guage to me. Even fully grounded I think it should just go to the other side of the guage. I've never heard of one going 360.

The way it works is the sender has variable resistance to ground. As it heats there should be less resistance, allowing more ground which causes the needle to move further. You can check it by clipping an ohmmeter lead to it and the other lead to ground. It should have resistance and should decrease as the engine warms.

Check the guage by removing the wire from the sender and touching it to ground. It should then read hot, not spin all the way around.

Cletis,

Thanks for the advice. I'll try grounding it out tomorrow. Chevy Duty's advice hasn't been great. (far from it)

I'll test it tormorrow and hopefuly have her ready to run this weekend. Thanks again.

Jacob