Water gauge

[Cbitz233]

Working on new gauges in my 83. The water gauge doesnt have a wire on the top left terminal. Is that normal or am i missing a wire? Gauge worked well untill i replaced the thermostat sending unit in the side of the block. Thanks

[WayneC]

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Edited January 29, 2019 by WayneC
see my updated post below

[Avanti83]

You could possibly be missing the ground. On the newer gauges it's usually a wire attached to a mounting stud if a terminal is not present.

[WayneC]

After some thought, and considering that the gauge worked before you installed a new sender, I'm going to withdraw my prior post above.

I think the sending unit provides (variable) grounding and that perhaps you used a non-conductive (ie, not dielectric) sealant on the sending unit threads that prevents a ground connection. You could check this theory by using a test wire with alligator clips to connect the metal body of the sender to a grounded part on the engine to see if that gets the gauge working again. If it does, you'll need to remove the sending unit and thoroughly clean the threads in the block (wire bottle brush with some brake cleaner) and also clean the threads on the temp sending unit.

Or, other possibilities are that the new sending unit is a) bad or b) not compatible with the new temperature gauge.

To check to see if the sending unit is bad, you can probably use a multimeter to measure the ohms reading between the sending unit terminal and a solid ground to see if the reading changes as the engine warms. Here is a Youtube video showing how to check it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puNKAW5Nurc

Perhaps the gauge is not compatible with the sending unit... you may need to contact the gauge manufacturer to see what sender they'd recommend for a Chevy V8.

For your further info, I did a search and found this on the net:  http://www.secondchancegarage.com/public/653.cfm

Edited January 30, 2019 by WayneC