Temperature gauge when car is off

[Jr's Sho]

I just have one question concerning my temp. gauge. It doesn't concern me at all, I was just curious if anyone else's does it too. But when I turn my car off, my temp. gauge slowly rises up to about the letter N on the gauge. And when I turn my car to the ON position, the gauge drops down to the actual reading. Kinda weird, is this normal?

 

[Sho-N-Go]

check the ground wire by the Power steering resivior and clean it and retighten the wire might even need to put a slightly bigger bolt it there. it will prob also go up at night when you turn headlights on ATC on and other loads.

 

[93MTXSHO]

Mine does it too, but mine doesn't lift that far. Mine rests around the A-L at operating temp. (thank God) and when I turn the key off it rises to that position.

 

[Jr's Sho]

About a month ago when I was having charging system problems I cleaned every ground wire in the engine compartment. And if I'm correct, that particular bolt stripped out so I had to put a larger screw in that exact hole you're talking about. I guess it's one of those things you will never figure out.... frown

 

[SHOZ123]

When the key is off there is no current going through the temp sensor. The temp sender is a variable resistor based on temperature that allow more or less current to go to ground. What you are seeing is the gauges built in, no power position used as an offset for calibration.

Almost all the cheaper electric gauges work like this. The higher quaility electric gauges will zero out in the off position as they have other means of calibration.

<small>[ October 07, 2002, 10:02 AM: Message edited by: SHOZ123 ]</small>