Scare In Desert Last Weekend

Buddy was showing me some mines. We parked his truck and took mine through the nasty stuff.

I noticed my tranny temp gauge hit 250 deg (TH350). I got out and put my hand on the tranny cooler. Definitely not 250 so we continued on.

Got home and tested in boiling water and I got 250 (should be around 200). Installed a new auto meter gauge and it ran 180 max today crawling in the heat. I even tested the new gauge in boiling water and it checked out.

Weird thing, the gauge went bad not the sender. I'm replacing my water temp next because I'm seeing these old gauges eventually go bad.

 

OK, inquiring minds want to know what brand those gauges were. I can't recall any of the SW's I've had on all sorts of vehicles and equipment for 6+ decades ever letting me down but then most of those were/are straight mechanical.

 

I didn't want to bad mouth because they are 20 years old. They are vdo and came with the Jeep when I pulled it home. They were electric not the hard line type.

I posted this as a heads up to people to always check the gauges if something doesn't seem right.

 

I’ve run VDOs in most of my vehicles for decades and never had a failure except the oil pressure senders springing leaks around the spade-lug terminal, but this is likely due to the proximity of the hot exhaust system about 4” away (on my Suby engine in the Vanagon). Every now and then, the OEM oil temp gauge in my Z3M pegs out, but a couple taps from my finger brings it back to reading correctly.
-Donny

 

I have seen more frightening things than bad gauges in the desert before.