Oil Temp Sender

Randy, I have two oil temp senders in my car. They are there as a kind of experiment. When I bought my oil temp gauge kit from Hall, it came with a sender and no instructions to mount it. I called Gary up he said there is a small pipe plug just above the fuel pump with the same size threads as the sender. I installed it there, and then was reporting temps significantly higher than others. Seems most other people have their sender located in the oil pan and I was getting readings about 40 degrees higher. I posted a question on this forum regarding this and Jack thought that the location might be responsible for the differnce but he wasn't sure how much differnce there would be. When I bought my 10 qt. oil pan, it had a plug for the oil temp sender. Rather than move the sender from the block, I added one with a switch so that I could check for differnt temps for differnt locations, just to check the results. Turns out there is an almost exact 40 degree difference over all of the various operating conditions, (highway, around town etc.)Jack said this info had verified a study he had seen about engine tests with internal temp sensers that showed significantly higher block temps than oil pan sensors. You might want to search this forum for discussions on "oil temp".

All of that said, if you have an oil pan with a place to mount the sender, I would mount it in the pan. It gets scary on a highway cruise to look at any temperature reading approaching 290- 300 degrees (subtract 40 and you're okay). Plus it seems like I was the only person with the sender in the block and people freaked when it was discussed about how high the readings I was getting.
Hope all this helps.

Gary #06984

Mr Cat, once the sender is in the pan (and I heartily recommend a fully baffled 10qt pan which will have a horizontal threaded boss), you should find that in a street Pantera, oil temps will be within a few degrees of the water temp (remember, stock gauges are not accurate unless calibrated in the car), up to about 4000-4500 rpms in 5th gear. At this point the engine is having to work pretty hard and many owners report driving by their oil-temp gauge! With 10W30 dino-oils, pan temps of 275 are ragged-edge for any sort of engine life, maybe 290 for full synthetics. Note also that these temps will drop rapidly if you slow down, which, since you'll be travelling at 140-145 mph for several minutes before the oil temp will increase, might be a real good idea! Police have been known to use "extreme measures" to stop cars at such speeds....

Thanks Gary & Jack!

I too got the Hall gauge set with no instructions. I guess that is Gary's way of getting us to learn more about Pantera's Right now we have a pretty stock engine without the 10 qt. pan so for now I'll try the block location and confirm temp readings. We plan to put a new 400hp + motor in this winter and it will have the big pan and correct location.

I'll let you know how my temps compare to yours, thanks again.

Randy & Linda Welch