Testing Your Oil Temperature Gauge

[Steve Nau]

I found an article with this title and I have some followup questions. I have the recently restored engine number 61933 back in my 1956 project and running.

The article explains how to determine if my gauge is Original or Modified. Based on that test mine is Modified. What does this mean?

I bought a new sending unit and it measures around 400 ohms at room temperature if I am looking at it right. The gauge does nothing when the engine is running so I
don't know what my next step is. I have voltage coming to the sending unit from the green wire attached.

[David Jones]

Steve, because your gauge was rebuilt unless you know who rebuilt it and what temp sender it was set up for you are guessing if it will work. if you are referencing the thread started by Gregg Spreeman on oil temp, he bought a decade box which simulated a temp sender by applying a varying resistance to the gauge and thereby enabling a determination of the correct resistance sender. The other way is to procure a stock temp sender which would have a resistance of between 30 and 200 ohms and see how that works. Also note that just running the car in the driveway is not going to get the oil temp up very high. You need to put a load on the engine and drive it for somewhere around 10 minutes to see any significant rise in oil temp.