Temperature Gauge Issue?

tt96cobra

New Member
Sep 11, 2008
19
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Indiana
I have a 96 cobra and the temperature gauge is not working consistently. It will move to the correct position ever so often, but in most cases it is buried to the left of the gauge most of the time. Does the collant temperature sensor just need to be changed? Is this sensor located in the front of the engine block on the left hand side in the front section of the motor??

Car has 1800 miles on it and I think that is might just be clogged or corroded?
 
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The temp sensor is on top front of the engine, on the left-hand lower side of the water bypass tube
. It should read about 300 ohms (According to auto zone's tech pages.) when your engine is warm if you would like to test it. Or if not, the're inexpensive and relatively easy to replace. Inspect the wiring also. If the temp sensor dosn't fix it and the wiring is good, pull the guage cluster and test the signal that the cluster is getting (I believe its wired directly to the sensor and not through the ecm, but havn't had to do this test on my cobra, just my LX.) If it is reading roughly the same as at the sensor, you may have a bad cluster. One other culprit could be your thermostat, however from my experiance if the t-stat is stuck open the sensor will usually go about 1/4 up and stay there, not completely to the cold side. However the t-stat is cheaper to replace than the cluster, so personally I would replace it first, just in case.
 
96 cobra temp gauage issue

I changed the temperature sensor on the passenger side of the motor and I still have NO SIGNAL going to the factory gauge within the cluster at all. Is there another sensor or sending unit on the drivers side of the motor that I can test??

Really stuck here. The car has very few miles so I wouldn't think that the cluster would be bad, but I guess anything could happen. if the T-stat was stuck open, wouldn't it register once the engine was warm? I get absolutely nothing. The needle is barried to the left side of the gauge almost appearing like no signal at all is getting to it. I have replaced passenger sensor and checked all fuses. Also I have checked wiring on sensor and also checked wiring on item on the drivers side of the motor as well because I believe there is one more item in this electrical process.

The last thing I have not done is change the actual clip that plugs into the temperature sensor. Someone at Autozone has told me that the plug itself could go bad. Everything is still pretty much brand new on this car, so I am scratching my head on what it could be. I am almost ready to take it to the local Ford dealer but wanted to give you all the information to see if there is anything else I could be missing that you guys know of.........:shrug:

tt96cobra
 
Pull plug on pcm and ect.the gray\red stripe is pin 38 and lg/red stripe is pin 91.on pcm thier is left side and right bolt in middle.both pins are on leftside.count left to right.2nd row down starts 27,28.........38.that is ref voltage. 4th row down starts 79,80 ......this is signal return .gray wire runs through many things lgreen goes direct to pcm.ck for short with meter