It's not impossible but it was supposed to be correct.
One thought I had is that the temp gauges likely show hot sooner on the old gauges than the new ones. In the 60's, "hot" was considered to be about 200 I think, with 212 being max that was safe. I think the factory thermostat in our cars was a 160 degrees.
Have you tried a heat gun just to see actual vs. indicated temp?
Hi carl thanks I will have to do that. It was a unit you had sent me with the speedo. GM if I remember the box correctly. I have it somewhere I think. I'll have to look.
Makes sense, it likely was. I brought a new GM unit home from work with me today to test with my meter.
At room temp, about 75 degrees, it tested at 583 ohms, similar to what the guy in the link above said his original tests at. I have 4 used ones I checked. They were at 618 680 704 727, quite a bit off as far as the new OEM unit goes.
I plan to do a more scientific test with these one day when I have more time.
I plan to check the one I installed in my car as well.
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1966 Strato Chief 2 door, 427 4 speed, 45,000 original miles
1966 Grande Parisienne, 396 1 of 23 factory air cars
Interesting. I brought home a brand new temp sender off the shelf in the parts department to test compared to some used ones I have. When I opened the box it had a sending unit in it all right, plus this!
Could this be the spring that is inside one of these units? If not, I have NO idea what this is or how it ended up in the new GM parts box.
Ok, I had 5 sending units to test, one brand new GM part out of the box, 12334869 which is a change up from the original 1513321 that would have been used in 65-66.
One of the senders is made slightly different than the rest. In the charts, it's #1. I suspect it is likely an aftermarket part.
Anyway, I tested them in a pot of water, measuring water temp with a digital cooking thermometer and a "gun" to verify.
___ 1_ 2_ 3_ 4_ 5 (new)
210* 95 90 96 94 78
195* 104 102 102 -- 80
175* 122 122 111 100 93
160* 160 138 148 139 125
145* 174 152 169 160 150
75* 727 680 704 618 583
Had an "oops" with unit #4 at the 195 degree mark, no reading.
One thing you will notice. The new sending unit is pretty much consistently lower ohms, and a smaller number equates to a higher reading on the gauge. I am convinced I will have the same high reading on mine when I finally get to run it.
Unit #5 is showing very similar resistance at 175 degrees as the other 4 used sending units showed just before boiling.
Ken, do you want me to mail you one of these used ones to try, or do you have something on the yard that has one you can swap in? It's the same sender in many many GM's in that era, likely even old 1/2 tons. If you have one that you think will be right, give me the application and I can look up to make sure it's the correct one.
-- Edited by Carl Stevenson on Sunday 7th of July 2013 10:33:51 PM
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1966 Strato Chief 2 door, 427 4 speed, 45,000 original miles
1966 Grande Parisienne, 396 1 of 23 factory air cars
Holy smokes Carl Thats a lot of work. Impressive. I'll look through my collection of tired tin and see what I can dig up for a replacement. I'll give it a try and let you know.
Well, for a variety of reasons, including laziness, I have not done much on the car the past year. However, it is 33 here today, so for fun I rolled the car outside and put gas in the brand new gas tank that I put on a while back. I had never run the car since removing the old tank, so I had no idea if the tach and gauges even worked other than they tested perfect.
SUCCESS!
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1966 Strato Chief 2 door, 427 4 speed, 45,000 original miles
1966 Grande Parisienne, 396 1 of 23 factory air cars
Sweet! noticed the temp gauge moving, don't have one on mine, so that's kink of cool to watch, same with the oil pressure. I do have a spare dash for my 65 2+2 with gauges, wonder if I can swamp that out?
Something to ponder on a rainy day. Enjoy the weather!
Sweet! noticed the temp gauge moving, don't have one on mine, so that's kind of cool to watch, same with the oil pressure. I do have a spare dash for my 65 2+2 with gauges, wonder if I can swamp that out?
Something to ponder on a rainy day. Enjoy the weather!
It would be a much easier swap on your 2+2 (US car to US car instead of US car to Canadian car). I suspect it would be relatively easy although it's been a while since I've seen the back side of a US car idiot light cluster to say for sure.
It's really not even that complicated doing it in to a Canadian car. Hardest part about it is you are replacing a cluster that used a printed circuit with a cluster that uses separate wires for each function. Just have to take time and sort them out but I've posted that info near the top of this thread in case someone wants to do it.
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1966 Strato Chief 2 door, 427 4 speed, 45,000 original miles
1966 Grande Parisienne, 396 1 of 23 factory air cars
Good morning, is there a tutorial on removing the cluster gauge from the dash? Thank you in advance, Ty
I don't know if someone has done that. I can give you a basic on it. I prefer to do it from the top with the dash pad off. I think you can do it from underneath but I'm fairly tall and getting under there is not a lot of fun for me!
To remove dash pad-
- Open the hood, remove cowl vent panel on the OUTSIDE of the car behind the hood. Look for a stud sticking through the firewall into the centre area under that panel you removed. It's a small stud, maybe 3/16" or so? Remove the nut from it.
-Inside the car, remove the anodized molding on each side of the windshield pillar. Then the hard part, get up behind the dash pad at each end and spread the clip that is holding the stud on the back of the dash pad. It's in the middle of part of the dash pad that hangs down at each end of the pad.
-Remove all the screws that go up into the bottom of the dash pad all the way across the pad. I am going by memory, but I think there is 6.
-Lift up the pad up slightly off the dash panel and pull it back.
-To remove the cluster, remove the clip holding the wire harness connector where it snaps in to the cluster. There's a picture of that connector near the top of this thread. It has a tab on each side.
-Remove the speedometer cable
-Remove 4 little nuts that hold the cluster in place, pull it towards the firewall, then up and out.
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1966 Strato Chief 2 door, 427 4 speed, 45,000 original miles
1966 Grande Parisienne, 396 1 of 23 factory air cars
