92hatchLX

On the ECT? I've got a gray wire and a green wire, both have red stripes on them. I'm trying to test my ECT sensor (via matdel's tech article), but I don't have either color of wire that he is talking about in his article. Anyone know?

mattdel

hmmm... lemme look again, hold on...

mattdel

ok the article needs to be updated. i just went out in the rain and looked at mine. There is a black wire with white stripe, on the left side of the connector. thats the ground
also a light green with yellow stripe, thats the wire to test.
if you don't have those wire colors, your probably looking at the wrong thing. the ECT is about 1" away from the #1 injector, going into a steel heater line.

92hatchLX

Matt, I'm pretty sure that the green wire is positive and the grey wire is negativeafter doingsome trial and error. I think that my ECT sensoris toast. On my multimeterit's reading between 8 and 9 volts at the line right above 130 degrees (so that's about 153 degrees). Looking at your graph, at 8-9volts,that sensor is telling my ECUthat my coolant isat a below zero temperature, which it definentally is not. This would add an a$$ load of timing and fuel. Even though I have an aftermarket cam and no cats (along with alot of other mods), it shouldn't smell as rich as it does. Think that I may have discovered a problem?

92hatchLX

I know what the ECT sensor is, I've replaced a few. They may have changed the wire coloring around from year to year, who knows (mine is a 92, not sure about yours). But I'm definentally looking at the ECT. The green wire is definentally the wire that I'm testing, my multimeter starts going nuts if I switch the two probes around.

mattdel

8-9 volts? jesus. key on?
try using the K-ohms setting, and see what it does there.

Pro: another update to the tech article, the meter must be set to K-Ohms, not Ohms

88BlueGT

Wow, I thought that you were going to ask about battery cables lmao. I was going to request to have you booted! lol

92hatchLX

So here's the results

-with motor runningat operating temperature (temp.gaugeneedle barely above the second line)
-positive probe from multi meter probing the green wire and negative probe grounded to the negative battery cable
-It's saying 11.9v

Did I test it incorrectly or anything?Or is this sensor for sure toast? I also tried testing the grey wire to make sure that I was probing thecorrect wireand it came out with about the same results. I'm not sure if my multimeter here at the house has aK ohms setting on it, I know that the one that I have at work does.Is thereanyway that I can be sure that I'm testing everything correctly? Half of meis sayingthat the sensor is bad, but the other half is saying that I'm doing something wrong.

mattdel

are the wires all taped up like the factory would have done? or are they all loose?
the sensor shouldn't read more than like 3.5v, and thats at real low temps.
if everything seems kosher with the wiring, i'd say replace it. i've never seen those kind of voltages from an ECT, so.... $30 and be done with it, i'd say.

92hatchLX

It's taped up and about 1/2 inch of wire is exposed before it goes into the piggyback connector. I'm going to retest it one more time just to make sure that I'm going going crazy. I ran codes on it too and the ECU isn't picking anything up it passes boththe KOEO and KOER.