Temp gauge mystery.....

[chevyshooter]

Good evening forum members. This is my first post. I have an 1986 Silverado that runs like a champ. It only has 45000ish original miles on it. Everything seems to work fine except for the temp gauge. Ive looked all over this forum and many others but cant seem to find a fix. I ground the green wire and gauge swings to the 3 o'clock position but wont return when not grounded. I have to move the needle back with my finger. I have tried 2 new sending units (the one by the exhaust manifold) but no change. I pulled the cluster, cut the green wire and jumped it straight to the sender. Swings to 3 o'clock position. The printed board looks fine and everything else works right as far as I can tell. Is there anything else I can try or maybe something I'm missing? I'm thinking about ordering a new gauge just in case. Everybody's help is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

[bake74]

     My vote is new gauge, sounds like you tested the other possibilities.

[rickyharp]

I have a 85 k-10 silverado with the same problam,mine was picking up the heat off the headers at the sending unit so I moved the sending unit to the intake manifold under the top hose on my edelbrock manifold,no change ,I switch out the gauge ,no change so the only other thing left was the printed board on the back of the panel,I switched that out and it was fixed.It runs about 195 degrees all day long even while plowing snow.Hope this helps.

[chevyshooter]

I finally received a new temp gauge yeterday and low and behold it worked. We did the green to ground test to see if the gauge would respond and it did so we kept looking but it turned out to be tha gauge the whole time. Got the truck back together and running like a champ last night.

[bake74]

     Glad to hear you got if figured out and it is working now.  Also good to hear when my suggestions are right.   

[rickyharp]

I wish my problam was as easy,because I have about 10 gauge clusters to choose from so parts are not really a problam.