Obviously try to seek out the original solution before embarking on the direction I went. Original is best in my book!
The direction I have found to resolve this was borne out of frustration of senders not working / working well and clumsy Colin here snapping the head off the last temp sensor I inserted into the cylinder head. The original sensor used to only sense just above the cold which is something that clearly is not right. Subsequent sensor did the same. I did test the wring and that was fine.
After a year of having a temp gauge that didn't really respond, I decided for the final time to extract the sensor, snapped the head off of it, felt like a pillock and thought that there must be a better way here.
If any of you remember back to the 1980s, those old enough, you'll remember that a conversion people used to do was to change their viscous fan to an electric fan. This added 3bhp, if I recall, and back then when 80bhp was generally the rule of thumb, hey--- we shouldn't knock that extra 3bhp.
So some of the simple versions were made by Kenlowe (other brands of course were available). But the Kenlowe version, you used to place a temp sensor into one of the coolant pipe (usually the top hose) and the wire would trail out of the pipe, under the jubilee clip and down to the electric cooling fan. This then had a thermostat to control when you wanted the fan to kick in and out.
So modifying this idea a little, I thought wouldn't a good solution for my sorry issue be that I didn't want the fan, but would take everything else that came with that kit. The sensor and a read out.
And I found something - in Hong Kong - that did what I wanted. So the bad news is that this is so far from original, it's like placing coil springs and independent rear suspension on the Capri. Well not quite, but you get my meaning.
The good news is that the accuracy of the coolant reading is so good, I get to the 0.0 reading in centigrade exactly what is going on. I never got that accuracy with the gauge. Well, I never saw any accuracy at all. So I quite like the substance over style.
But in your shoes, I would persevere with the style first and then look for the substance. If you want to know more, I'll find where I got all of this. It wasn't expensive.
What I have done is rigged it all up within one of the coolant hoses, sensor on the end testing the temp of the coolant and then placed the read out on the lower dashboard, between the clock and clutch pedal area. It works effectively, if a little out of place. But with these older motors, you can't be too careful and overheating is one of their failings as they get older. That can come partly because the gauge is not so good. No more issue with this method of temp reading.
But accepted, this looks a little crude and out of place. I have placed a Youtube video up here to show what it looks like. The aim of the video was to test which was the faster way to get to operating temp - by running the car down the street, like a typical journey out, or idling the car in your driveway. That was all.
This footage here is the motion one and I do have the static idling version as well, because I am sad like that.
So which one is the fastest way to warm your car up then ? Answers on a postcard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6AI03nY280
