Temperature Sensor/Gauge

[1997]

both mine run as your pic here shows, both have 195's....

it would peg and check guage light would come on when head gasket was going south ... so as stated, maybe not accurate but tells you what's happening out of the norm.

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[SUBURBAN5]

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This was with iron heads, with aluminum heads the dash gauge reads hotter at the same coolant temp.

Looks cooler to me like 160 to 180ish

 

[SUBURBAN5]

both mine run as your pic here shows, both have 195's....

it would peg and check guage light would come on when head gasket was going south ... so as stated, maybe not accurate but tells you what's happening out of the norm.

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That's what I'm use too. Thinking of just moving the needle

 

[Caman96]

I think out guages are less accurate compared to my orginal cluster guage lol. Playing around trying to do simple math I came up with this readout. May be totally wrong but it lines up with the higher guage.

each tick do not represent 13.75, its not linerar. your upper limit is prob 280 or 260
The lower is probably 80-100

I thought that too, but apparently you can’t read the gauge that way as AuroGirl pointed out. FWIW mine runs same as most have posted in this thread.

 

[Caman96]

I don’t know what to make of it but with a 195° thermostat mine is right here too.

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[SUBURBAN5]

I don’t know what to make of it but with a 195° thermostat mine is right here too.

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Well at least we know from the responses we want to be between the middle mark and the line before 210 lol

 

[df2x4]

I just know roughly where the needle is supposed to sit and don't worry about it unless it deviates from that position.

I noticed once that my Suburban was sitting at the first quarter mark or slightly below, and that clued me in to a thermostat that was stuck open. I saw the red truck hit the halfway mark at 210 once and discovered a small crack in the radiator.

 

[Caman96]

I just know roughly where the needle is supposed to sit and don't worry about it unless it deviates from that position.

That’s where I’m at.

 

[Busted Knuckle]

I have three 98s that all read a little more than halfway between 100 and 210. The temperature gauge’s scale isn’t even linear, so I wouldn’t read too much into it much less try to determine the temperature that each tick mark corresponds to.

As mentioned above, a scanner can be used to read the ECT sensor output which is installed next to the thermostat. That’s the value that the computer uses and should be around the thermostat setpoint.

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That yellow line is about what I get using a 180F thermostat. Up at least one small grad for 195F.

 

[Supercharged111]

I just know roughly where the needle is supposed to sit and don't worry about it unless it deviates from that position.

I noticed once that my Suburban was sitting at the first quarter mark or slightly below, and that clued me in to a thermostat that was stuck open. I saw the red truck hit the halfway mark at 210 once and discovered a small crack in the radiator.

Once you bump the scanner against the gauge, good enough is good enough. If it rides high or low, something is different. If it rides way high or way low, something is amiss. It's always nice to have the scanner handy to quantify how high or low off normal something is. I used the laptop back in June to see the dually hit 220 before the gauge showed 210 just like I saw the 1500 riding below 170 with a faulty thermostat. With a new stat it rides that middle line dead nuts again. Neither of those faults was going to hurt a fly, but the factory gauge was good enough to point me toward something out of the ordinary.