Correct water temp sending unit?

What temp gauge do you have?  

this may help:  

http://www.ranchero.us/forum/i...rature-sender.20928/

My gauge is the 260 degree. Apparently a previous owner relocated the sender from the pressure tank to the front of the engine block so I don't know if the correct sender was used. I found the specs of the senders at Summit. TS-24 is 282 ohms @ 77 degrees, 176 @ 100, 24@ 220, 16 @ 250.

TS-58 is 200 ohms @ 77 degrees, 125 @ 100, 17 @ 220, 11 @ 250. Which sender do you think would be compatible with my gauge?

FWIW, I run the TS-58 sender installed on the front of the block with a 260-degree gauge and the Pantera Electronics Temperature Gauge Compensator.

de tomaso pantera electrical components (pantera-electronics.com)

Go look at The Pantera Place. There you will find a comprehensive write up on this subject. Also, near the bottom of the page you will find this chart that Bill Taylor put together.

Thanks for the help. I didn't realize that Pantera Electronics had a solution for this issue. Ron, I'm assuming that this combination is giving you good results and peace of mind. I will check out the info at Pantera Place.

Exactly, Dennis. Engine at temperature with 180-degree thermostat. The needle pretty much vertical corresponding to Jon's temperature compensator calibration for 180 degrees.

I know that P-E offers the temperature gauge compensater but in a quick check, I didn't see it listed.

What I have found with the temperature gauge situation is that first off, the original temperature sender for the car is the Autolite brand. I can't tell you what the resistance values are for it but I can say that it is the only one that I have found that works correctly with the original Pantera gauge OR ANY Ford supplied temperature gauge.

What I think you are experiencing now with trying to find the Standard replacement for it is, there is no direct replacement.

ALL of the Standard senders will read about 25 to 30° HIGHER then the actual temperature. I've fought this battle and it is plain and simple. Standard's senders ARE WRONG and calibrated INCORRECTLY.

This has affected ALL FORD PRODUCTS completely across the Ford product line that originally used the Autolite temperature sender. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS. EVERY classic "Ford" that uses a temperature GAUGE and replaces it with the Standard senders has complained about this EXACT ISSUE. PERIOD.

Apparently, to his credit, Mr.Haas recognized the issue and made a simple plug in to correct this issue. It is the simplest route to go in.

There is ONE other solution. Find a new Autolite sender and install it. It is the only correctly calibrated sender in existence that anyone can find. There is only one issue with that. They are obsolete and if you can find one new, they generally bring $100 to $150. So the "market" really knows about this already. Just some of the Pantera folks are stragglers and here and there are wandering into the situation, wondering exactly what is wrong with their cars.

It is plain and simple. Standard has just f uc ked up big time on this. They don't care now and don't want to hear about it anymore. They are not going to fix it for what they see as $15 sender. It is just "our" problem.

Go ask Jon. Get his "corrector". You will be happier and probably as a result will live longer. I'd guess that I just mis-read his product list offerings and is there somewhere?

It is under the electrical components menu.

Thanks for the explanation about the Standard senders. I'm contacting Jon this morning to order his corrector. I'm using quite a few of his products and all have worked well.

He also has senders for sale.

I don't know if Jon has the correct resistence senders to start off with? I could never find them recently (within the last 4 years) looking for more. The only one that I know about that works for sure is the original Autolite and the Motorcraft version being the same.

The Autolite was what was installed by Ford when the engine was built and the Motorcraft was the Ford over the counter replacement for it.

Go with his recommendation. If the sender is already installed in the engine then why pull it all apart?  Just use the "P-E compensator". Somewhere in the past I was able to get the Motorcraft versions new and they all work correctly in three of my cars.

They are just difficult to find new now and everyone knows the deal, so they are expensive.

Jon Haas tells me that his compensator only works with the 260 degree gauge that came on the '73-'74 cars and will not work with the 230 gauge. My car is a '72 pre-L but has the 260 degree gauge so a previous owner must have changed it. I also must not have the original Autolite  sender or I wouldn't be having this problem. So, I'm buying Jon's sender and compensator and hopefully put this issue to rest.

I understand that it is confusing and frustrating but I think that you have an eminent solution.

Standard must sell thousands of these senders? It is just amazing that they won't fix the issue?

I've been through this with a bunch of people. The initial reaction is that I'm crazy? That may be true but I'm not nuts. It is all right in front of peoples eyes yet they don't see it.

I'm sure there are people that have spent hundreds if not thousands trying to fix an engine that isn't broken.

The right sender is so simple yet so critical. It's like having a flat washer that is constantly defective. It just doesn't seem to make sense.

Besides the U.S sender/Italian gauge mismatch, the 230 gauge normally READS WRONG! With the sender in a pan of water on the stove and a glass thermometer, its easy to check. Ford used two different resistors over the years to 'fix' this electrical mismatch (in the TSBs) and failed both times. The 260 gauge reads much closer to true and Jon's corrector should make things perfect. Just be sure Ford's dealer-installed 'corrector resistor' is not still taped into your gauge's sender wire. Mine wasn't even soldered!

In re-reading this entire thread, I'm thinking about the details that Ford used on their own US built and market cars.

I'm thinking that somewhere along the line of history of building and selling cars in the US, there could have been similar issues with Ford getting feedback on the "inaccuracy" of their temperature gauges?

Look at this picture here of a '67-8 Ford Mustang temperature gauge. Do you see any numbers? I can tell you that ideally the right operating temp is in the middle somewhere.

There is no debate about exactly what the temperature is. Whatever your reaction is to that, I think it is the solution, i.e., the temperature in the middle is "about right"!

I just offered this as amusement. I have to remember that there are still many here that still don't know that their Detomaso IS a Ford?

Doug, that is amusing. I recently 'redid' my '74 Ranchero that I've owned since 1978. I replaced the sender in the 408 c.i. Cleveland with one of the Standard Motor units, don't remember which one. My car is the 500 version and has a small temp gauge with no markings, just an H at the end of the line. That car runs cool so the needle has never been close to the H.

I think what happens when using a vehicle with the "Ford" gauge of just L and H, if you have never seen the reading before of don't remember where it was before there is nothing to compare the reading to.

In addition, if you never had the Autolite or the Motorcraft sender in the engine, how would you even suspect that there is a difference?

Probably you would just think, "that's normal for my car"?

Hence when you convert to say VDO gauges, like I did, they provide the correct sender, and eliminate all this BS.  Gary Hall was fond of VDO and I changed them out 30 years ago.

@panterapatt posted:

Hence when you convert to say VDO gauges, like I did, they provide the correct sender, and eliminate all this BS.  Gary Hall was fond of VDO and I changed them out 30 years ago.

I agree on that. I went to the VDO's quite a while ago.

For Owners who want to keep the original look of the Veglia Borletti gauges, any gauge shop can take the mechanism out of a VDO (or Smiths, Autometer, etc) gauge and replace the mechanism in the OEM gauge. They even use the original needle, so it still looks like the original gauge but it’s now “VDO” accurate.