[DeTomaso] Electrical Gremlins?

[clay willmott]

I had the false increase on my temp gauge with lights turned on also when I got my car.  Looking for the short I found many other gremlins splices etcand they are all fixed/removed now.  Of course I ended up taking off all gauges, dash, and most of the interior.  Then I added all the pantera elctronics stuff and really got way into it.  Funny how one thing leads to another huh??

To save time and make this a short story my black wire connection into the temp gauge as I recall had a loose screw.  Thus the faston tab was tight but the screw was about to fall out.  This caused the engine temp to read a jump from 180 to 260 instantly when I would turn on the lights.  Of course the engine temp was always really 180 as verified with a direct temp gauge in the block.  All the result of SoBills daisy chaining explanation and that the systems rely on other systems grounding.

I would check the ZF and major grounds but I bet the answer is behind your gauges.  I would check the wires and ground connection on the back of the gauges which can be done without removing the dash.
What sucks is some of the wires are short and it makes it difficult to check without disconnecting some wires.

I would check the engine temp gauge ground first for that screw in the back of the gauge.
Let me know if that is the culprit.


Clay

> Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 07:58:55 +0200
> From: Thomas.Tornblom at hax.se
> To: artstephens at verizon.net
> CC: detomaso at realbig.com
> Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Electrical Gremlins?
> 
> Art Stephens skrev:
> >     I noticed recently that when I turn on my parking lights,  my temp,  fuel and oil pressure gauges show slight increases in their readings. I would say my temp gauge shows an increase of about 10 degrees.  I would guess that the ammeter would show the same increase if not masked by the added draw from the battery?  Yesterday I developed another problem.  My temp gauge starts dancing around intermittently with the engine running.  It will instantly drop maybe 30 degrees and then jump right back up to the correct temp.  My fuel gauge seems to be doing the same thing.  I took the nut off the ground stud behind the dash.  I removed the wires and cleaned the stud though there wasn't much to clean,  it looked very good.  As I suspected,  no improvement afterward.  With the engine running,  I removed the gauge panel and wiggled all the wires at the back of the four gauges,  I saw no reaction on any of the gauges.  Another quirk,  with the engine shut off,  I turn the headlights
>  on and the oil pressure needle starts climbing past half way.  I don't like having an inconsistent temp gauge and I'm also a little concerned about an electrical fire. I figured the next step I would take would be to check the wire's connection to the water temp sending unit.  Any other suggestions?
> 
> The gauges use the same fairly thin round wire for both the gauge and 
> the illumination. I got some new lamp sockets with separate power and 
> ground connections and installed a separate ground for the lamps. That 
> fixed my problem.
> 
> And the ammeter does not suffer from this as it doesn't use the ground 
> for anything but the illumination..
> 
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Art
> > 
> 
> Cheers,
> Thomas
> _______________________________________________
> 
> Detomaso Forum Managed by POCA
> 
> Archive Search Engine Now Available at http://www.realbig.com/detomaso/
> 
> DeTomaso mailing list
> DeTomaso at list.realbig.com
> http://list.realbig.com/mailman/listinfo/detomaso

_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don’t worry about storage limits.
http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage1_052009