yurizx6r

Wow very nice! Question though, how does the water temperature sensor gauge plug in? Do you have to piggy back off the coolant temp sensor, do you drill a hole, or jumps a coolant line? How does that work?

dawson1112

There are two sensors on the front of the lower intake. The one of the passanger side is the coolant temp sensor , the one on the drivers side is the coolant temp sending unit for the stock gauge. I always just remove the sending unit and replace it with the sending unit that comes with the auto meter gauge.
This the pick of my stock gauge sending unit replace that entire piece with the one that comes with the gauge set.

dawson1112

Note that when you replace that sending unit with the gauge kit one, your stock gauge will no longer function.

Lime.GT

I would never rely on the stock gauges so this is the setup I had in my '89 Notch, it worked very well and gave me piece of mind.

yurizx6r

Ok cool. Question though, in our cars does the sending unit have anything do with OTHER than just the gauge? If I swap that sensor, will it have any effect on the cars performance if the stock one is not working? Also, couldn't I use one of the ports on the opposite side of the manifold?

9redfox3

My stock gauges seem fine never had any issue ....but if you looking for changes and have some nice mods and h/p under the hood why not get better ones more accurate with the true numbers like mjr46 said ?

ruskiegunlover

Does anyone make a piece to splice in the aftermarket gauges without killing the stock ones? Even though they aren't as good, it sucks to have dead gauges.....As in, maybe a 'T' that would screw into the oil pressure sending unit piece off of the engine, so that you could screw in the original, and on the other end, the aftermarket?

lxman1

Temp gauge on mine (verified with a mechanical gauge)

The first line up above the bottom(130) is 160*
The second line up is 180*
the bottom of the M is 195* which is where mine runs now.

The others are pretty close too except for the tach. My 6500rpm rev limiter kicks in when the tach shows about 7100.

yurizx6r

Wow... thanks! That's where mine is. I just replaced the radiator (with a fluidyne radiator), water pump, uppper/lower intake manifold, deleted the heater core tubes, swapped the coolant temp sensor and coolant sending unit, and swapped the thermostat (put a stock 195 degrees one in) all at the same time. It was running at about the second line (so I guess 180), but now I'm running at the bottom/middle of the "M." I was wondering if this was normal. The only thing I can think of is either the sending unit was different (I put the OEM motorcraft in there) or the previous owner put in a 180 degree thermostat in there. Who knows, it's hard to say when you do all that at once.

Maxwelhse

3 very simple and cost effective words..

Mr. Gasket Thermocap

No.. You can't see it inside the car and it's measuring radiator temp, not engine temp.. BUT.. It's cheap, it's effective, it's well calibrated (matches my thermocouple on my multimeter as near as my eyes can see the needle), and you can easily get a feeling for what temperature your in dash gauge is at vs. the actual gauge under the hood. Its obviously the easiest thing to install as well... Truth be told, if your car is getting hot you're probably going to get some other signs too. In the long run I'd like to replace my factory gauges with something better but I personally want to stay as low profile as possible. In the meantime the Thermocap is a nice option. I've been meaning to install a simple mechanical oil pressure gauge under the hood too just as a reference.

Oh.. That's my Fluidyne it's screwed into.

Another oh... People ALWAYS comment on my "cool radiator cap"... "Is that a gauge?"... "where'd you get that?" and they're not being sarcastic. It's a conversation starter!