Hi all,

Just wanting to pick your brains about temp gauges and senders.. I have acquired an electric smiths water temp gauge, however it did not come with a sender. Is it just a matter of wiring it up to the original sender or do I have to find one that is calibrated to my gauge?

Cheers,

Leighton

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1975 Leyland Mini: 1060cc - resto/ ex-hsc project.

I'm pretty sure you wire it directly to the sender n one wire to the regulator off the back of the speedo which cuts the volts down to 8 or something....... Somebody else will confirm, I'm fairly sure this is right

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1964 smooth roof panel van
1967 Mk 1 X-Police cooper s
1970 mini k
1975 leyland

Mine came with a wiring diagram that has one wire coming from the sender and the other coming from the I connection on the Voltage Regulator attached to the Speedo.

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Behold! The mighty 850!

I think you need to use a specific sender matched to the gauge, not the std sender.
I seem to recall having trouble with either a Smiths oil pressure or temp gauge when I used a VDO sender. Bought the original Smiths sender and suddenly it worked correctly. But in the opposite case, the VDO sender worked fine - ie the VDO/Oil Pressure combo didn't work properly until I used the Smiths sender too, but the opposite temperature combo did work for example.

Safest action for you then is to buy the correct Smiths sender (or whatever brand yours is).

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You may not need a new sender at all. It will do no harm to try the one you have already in the head, or in a bowl of hot water with a temperature sender.

There's two part numbers in Australian minis, an early and a later number. The early number was for use without a 10 volt voltage stabiliser (pre-64) and a later type to 79. The 10 volt stabiliser allowed for the voltage dips you get with car voltage supplies, and prevents the gauge dipping as the load increases.

Pre -64 GRT102 - 40-120 Ohms - (Without Stabiliser)
Post 64 GTR104 - 10-180 Ohms

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SooperDooperMiniCooperExpertEngineering

All garage work involves equal measures of enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility.

thanks for all the replies ill give it a go with the existing sender and see where that takes me.

cheers,

Leighton

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1975 Leyland Mini: 1060cc - resto/ ex-hsc project.