Temp sender wiring

[Bigjcc55]

All of a sudden my temp sender has died, I had some previous problems with corroded wiring and a dodgy sender. I checked the two wires going to the sender tonight and found I had no earth feed to the sender, is this correct? If I put a temp earth in place from the block the gauge reads way too high, almost off the end of the gauge. It was a brickworks stat and sender I fitted. Any help or advice would as usual be appreciated

jc

[itchyfeet]

one side of the sensor should be earth ( brown wire) if the earth is bad either try and clean up the earths ( under coil) wire up a new one.

The other side of the sensor is yel/red wire and this goes to the dash and the guage. Sounds to me like you have incorrectly wired this to earth and this will send the guage to the top.

[Bigjcc55]

Thanks, when I wired up a temp earth that's when the gauge shot up, it's now sitting three quarters up the scale and the stat isn't open yet. can the wires only go on one way? I have two seperate spade connectors now as the old plug was badly corroded inside. But it was working correctly this time yesterday the connected the same way.

[itchyfeet]

I don't think it's polarised it's just a temperture sensitive resistor, if you have changed the crimps my guess is that they were touching which shorts the guage wire to earth.

[kevtherev]

there are two temp monitors on a DG
Do you have a metal thermostat or a plastic one?

Have you replaced the sender with the correct one (several to choose from)

[Bigjcc55]

I've thought that one and changed them to insulated terminals to try and eliminate the problem. If I earth it the needle goes all the way to the right, just now it's three quarters.

[Bigjcc55]

It's a plastic housing, and I replaced the black sender the one which faces the front of the van as you look at it from the engine bay.

[itchyfeet]

three quarters is a bit high maybe it's faulty still but maybe it's running hot.

[kevtherev]

Could be your voltage stabliser in the dash pod is not working.
they are inexpensive and readily available

[Bigjcc55]

Would the dash pod stabiliser only affect the temp gauge? I also thought about it running hot, but the thermostat hadn't opened yet, and it was also new about 100 miles ago.

[kevtherev]

It would affect the fuel gauge too

[kevtherev]

did you test the new thermostat to see if it opens in hot water?

[Bigjcc55]

I was going to try that, but thought it was likely to be an electrical problem as the gauge was working ok yesterday, not that it couldn't happen but it would seem a bit strange that a new sender and stat would chuck it overnight?

[itchyfeet]

where did you get the thermostat from? there are some poor quality ones around.

[Bigjcc55]

It was a brickwerks stat, I'm going to try the old one in and see how that goes.