Over heating? or bad gauge

[painkiller]

hello, I am new to the forum as a member, have been looking over them for about half a year as a guest, untill i finally got a deuce, and i was driving it down the road when i noticed the temp gauge was on 240 so that kinda scared me for a second untill i pulled over and took a look under the hood and didn't see any signs of over heating, but to play it safe i decided to wait a while before i started it back up and when i did, it was still on 240 was pretty close to home so i decided that i could make it there, and i did, and my friend has a laser temp reader, and he pointed it at verious parts of the engine including the block, valve cover, radiator, and none of them were even close to 240, so i decided to let it wait untill the next day, when i knew it would be cold, and sure enough it was on 240 right after starting the truck, so i was wondering if any of you know of why it would be doing this

 

[Monster Man]

gotta be a bad sender unit. I've never seen 240, the highest I've seen with winter front fully closed and it being 70 degrees out was 210, and within 2 minutes of opening the winter front cover it dropped to 190. If it were 240 you'd feel it through the firewall, that engine pumps some heat out the hood and side panels. Normal for me when it is 70 out is around 185. It takes quite a long time to build heat, so check out that sender unit, also jiggle the wires on the back of the gauge

 

[BKubu]

I had an M813A1 with the same problem. I replaced the gauge and the sending unit and never fixed the problem. For some reason, it appeared that it was warming up on the gauge twice as fast (and warm) as it really was. I did the same thing...checked the motor with a laser temperature gauge and the motor was running in the normal range. I never figured out the problem.

 

[painkiller]

alright thanks alot guys i think i'll just buy some mechanical one for the time being while i look around for the unit

 

[ken]

If you decide to get a man one, you'll need to extend the fitting about 1/2 inch. the port where the sending unit goes is real shallow.

 

[painkiller]

hmm i see, well i don't really use the truck as a daily driver so i guess i will just try and find the right sending unit, would like to do a full tune up also so most likely by the time i get that done i will have found a sending unit

 

[Kaiserjeeps]

Saturn Surplus had the sending units. Go buy a candy thermometer and carefully pop the cap. That will tell you exactly what your temp is. A good comparison to the guage...

 

[painkiller]

Ah, nice i found one now just have to call and order it up, thanks alot man