[TR] Temp Gauge - 72 TR6

[Randall]

> Can someone tell me if  there is a simple test I can run that will
> tell me if the temp gauge is faulty or not???

IMO, depends a great deal on what you consider "faulty".  If you can run the
engine and see the gauge rise, then it works to at least some extent.
Everything after that is just a matter of how accurate it is.  (If you can't
run the engine, then temporarily connect a jumper from the sender wire to
ground and turn the key on.)

>  Also if the unit is bad
> can they be fixed without much trouble???

Sure, send it off to Mo-Ma to be refurbished :^)

Seriously, if it doesn't work at all (and the problem is inside the gauge),
then it's probably not worth fooling with.  But if it's a matter of poor
calibration, they can be recalibrated with some effort.

One of the things I always look for to judge temp gauge performance is what
it reads when the thermostat opens.  If you start the engine from cold, the
gauge should rise relatively rapidly at first.  Then it should stop rising
when it gets to where the thermostat opens.  If you have the engine just
idling in your drive, you can tell when this happens by feeling the air
coming off the radiator fan; it will suddenly get warm when the Tstat opens.
Assuming your Tstat works and is a 180F model, this should be fairly close
to 180F, which I like to see somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 on the
temperature gauge.

Randall