Another Friends Woe's

[Rob's Lexx]

posting on behalf of a friend of mine, coz i thought u guys and gals' know far more about cars than most garages :winky:

anyway, she owns a 98' 1.3 L fiesta and since friday, the temperature guage has stopped working. any ideas what could be the fault??

a local garage told her that it could well be a wiring issue not sure on that one though coz she's never had any problem with it before!!

possibly the needle may have given up??

please feel free to post up any ideas.

cheers

rob

[MacRS200]

Take it the gauge stays on cold and the car still heats up, e.g the heater blows out warm air.

If this is the case I would say it is either a faulty temperature sender unit, gauge or the wires from the sender unit. Check the wiring first and then the sender unit as they are the mist likely culprits.

[lexicon]

The most likely is probably the temperature sender (or the connection to it) and then the gauge itself.

First though, I would check the coolant level. It's possible that the level is lower than the sender and it's not measuring anything - I nearly killed a mondeo engine because of this once!

[Rob's Lexx]

cheers for the input guys.

will ask her to check the engine coolant level tomorrow.

dunno if warm air is coming out from the vents, think it is (as was told everything else seemed to be fine).

cheers

rob

[Leeky]

Does it move at all even after driving for a while? Do you get hot air coming out of the heater?

It could be the thermostat has gone. My Celica GT4 (ST205) had what i thought was a dead temp gauge as it was constantly on the bottom.

Took it for a blat down the motorway and with 5mins of 1bar boost it started to bob up and down a bit so i checked the thermostat and sure enough the pin had come out meaning it was constantly open.

:)