Broken Gauges(?)

[csampson311]

Hey guys,
On my 93' I think there may be something wrong with my oil and water temp gauges. For some reason the needle on both do not move. On the oil temp gauge the needle is constantly about 3/4 of the way to H and the water temp is resting at the bottom. I pulled my fuses as I suspected this would be the first thing wrong but according to the diagram I had those gauges are on the same fuse as the dash lights which are perfectly fine. Is there anywhere specific I should check before pulling apart the dash?
As a side not: All the other gauges are working fine. Maybe they are independently wired?

 

[trail B2]

I have a 93 dash in my B2 the gauges do come out as one gauge pieces the electrical connection holds it in there.Give that gauge a little tug it will come off in your hand.It's really a clever design.If you decide to change any gauges with junk yard gauges there are a few miner differences in them so pay close attention to detail.

Research info and check sending units first usually the problem.

 

[csampson311]

Since the other gauges around it are receiving power, my guess would be that these are as well. From how you described the design of connections Trail, im thinking its the sending units. Oh joy haha How would i go about testing them?

 

[Hawk1339]

Since the other gauges around it are receiving power, my guess would be that these are as well. From how you described the design of connections Trail, im thinking its the sending units. Oh joy haha How would i go about testing them?

There is a common ground to those two gauges. I would suspect a grounding issue before I would entertain the possibility that two otherwise unrelated sending units failed simultaneously. See the wiring diagram on page 8 of this document:

http://users.isp.com/vmstep/stuff/rangerinst.pdf

Unless you've done the idiot gauge mod, the oil sender is just a switch. You can test the gauge by simply grounding the connector to the sender. The temp sender is a variable resistor; if you have the means you can clip a 100Ω potentiometer to the sender connector and test the gauge with that.

A likely cause is a bad connection somewhere. These signals both go through two or three different connectors between the gauge and the sender.

 

[csampson311]

@hawk
Sweet thanks
I'll check the multiple connections and ground tomorrow.

 

[spraymonkey]

I had the same issue but im a newb to this and not sure how different the 93 is to a 96.my oil pressure cluster gauge ran at 3/4 to low and found it was some sludge in the adapter so i cleaned that and I just put a 1/4 npt "T" and added a mech oil pressure and everything works good with the oil pressure gauges. As for the Temp gauge that one was fun lol, first changed my sending unit, didnt work, So i grounded the single wire with a screwdriver to the block to see if the gauge even worked and it did move but not much. So my next step was to check the gauge out, I just used a voltmeter and put it to ohms to see if maybe the trim/variable resister had anything there or if it was fried. It was good, so i looked at the solder joints and they were pretty rough so i resolder'd the resistor, then i seen that the arm for the need was jammed and used two butterknifes to pry up the arm a bit. Pop'd it back into the dash and Wala! works great. Not sure if it would work for you but it did for me, and like i said before im a newb to trucks and just lost my man-ginity so its all new to me but im learning quick lol.