more temp sender Q's

[esw5@cornell.edu (Ernest Wong)]

I've just rejoined the temp sender worrying crowd for the second time.

Symptoms:
        Temp guage in dash works fine. (then why am I writing?? Read on)

        After 87 5000S is all warmed up. I take said car for the long way
to supermarket. It's a long 60+mph drive flat and downhill. Temp guage
drops to below the 1/3 level. Sorta like when it's warming up. Would
probably be about 86 degrees if I had the Canadian numerically numbered
guage face.

Isn't that a little toooo low to keep oil clean of contaminants.

Or is this a new failure mode of the sender? The guage doesn't drop like a
stone after I cleaned the plug it 1.5 months ago.

Is the thermostat kludged up and failing to close fully at times? No
easy(cheap) way to check this except taking it to garage to get coolant
temp checked, huh.


BTW. This only happens on those nice 50+mph drives. It's been cool
lately.(ambient temps around 40ish)

Did my new front chin spoiler make the radiator tooooo efficient. Thought
the thermostat would take care of that. Sigh1

Thanks for any lessons in Audiology.

My new battery has been reading 14.2V on the climate control readout. This
is right after startup. Then falls to 13.9V for regular driving. That's
nice.

Ernest Wong
esw5@cornell.edu