bad water temp gauge?

I recently changed out the water pump... after posting on here, and someone suggested that it had a bad seal, that seems to have fixed the leak- Thanks!

I got everything back together,and I have another strange problem. I can get hot air out of the heater, a sign that the engine is geting warm (when the automatic climate control is working right (another problem for another post)), within several block of driving. But the temperature gauge doesn't move very far at all. If I leave the car running for like an hour or more, it barely gets to the bottom of norm.

It seems to have behaved like this eversince I had I took out the radiator out, and had it rebuilt, and then I installed it myself, about a year ago, but not this bad.

I am wondering if its a sign of a bad gauge, or do I need to 'bleed' the system, and get rid of any air in the top of the block? If thats the case, I bet I needed to do that when I put the radiator back in last time I had it apart, right?

thanks all!

opps forgot to add the car info...

1988 TC, automatic tranny...
bryan berndt
[email protected]

Had this happen to me on a 5.0 crown vic, In the end it was the thermostat stuck open, Engine never got hot.

I believe that if air were next to the temp sender(hot hot air) the thing would read sky high. correct me if im wrong

Originally posted by bryanb:
I recently changed out the water pump... after posting on here, and someone suggested that it had a bad seal, that seems to have fixed the leak- Thanks!

I got everything back together,and I have another strange problem. I can get hot air out of the heater, a sign that the engine is geting warm (when the automatic climate control is working right (another problem for another post)), within several block of driving. But the temperature gauge doesn't move very far at all. If I leave the car running for like an hour or more, it barely gets to the bottom of norm.

It seems to have behaved like this eversince I had I took out the radiator out, and had it rebuilt, and then I installed it myself, about a year ago, but not this bad.

I am wondering if its a sign of a bad gauge, or do I need to 'bleed' the system, and get rid of any air in the top of the block? If thats the case, I bet I needed to do that when I put the radiator back in last time I had it apart, right?

thanks all!

Sounds like a bad cooling temperature sender to me. That's what the sometimes do, usually slowly register lower and lower.

You could unhook the wire (on the bottom of the engine) and ground the wire with the key on. If the gauge and circuit are ok, then the gauge should read peg at HOT. Then more than likely your sending unit is bad since you do get hot air from the heater.

JT

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JT
[email protected]
www.geocities.com/turbocpe/
1987 T-Bird Turbo Coupe T-5
1994 T-Bird LX 4.6L
1988 T-Bird Turbo Coupe A4LD
1988 T-Bird 3.8L
1979 T-Bird Heritage 351M

I should also mention that the thermostat was in fact changed out when I did the water pump. I forgot to mention that. I changed it out, as I thought I still had the aftermarket lower temerature one in there, and that was contributing to the gauge running cool. Not the case. the old one was the stock 192 F, but I replaced it anyway, with a stock one.