The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay 1956 Temp Gauge Testing

Anyone know of a decent way of testing the electric temp gauge for the gauge cluster? I have a new temp sender, but have not had good luck in wiring it to the gauge and testing if the gauge works.

if the power lead is attached to the correct terminal [one toward driver side], grounding the other terminal [pass side] or the wire at the sender should make the gauge move .... the sender is a variable resistance that changes as it gets hotter - make sure you do NOT use any thread sealer or teflon on the sender, it needs to have a good ground to the engine .... and welcome to the garage

Bill

52 pickup,
Another welcome. As a new guy you need to learn to use the search feature in the header. If you type in temp. or temperature gauge you will get a number of posts which deal with trouble shooting, repair, and calibration of this gauge.
As a sidebar, fuel and temp gauges (balanced coil type) work the same way. The senders are nothing but variable resistors. As the fuel level/temp goes up, the resistance goes down (usually).
A number of gearheads lurk here just waiting to pounce on a truck/car problem you have.

Thanks for the tutorial Shop Shark.