Temp Gauge Red Light came on!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dan C
Don't be too hard on the young fella! I discovered from bitter experience that the temp gauge on the TD5 has only 3 positions- cold, operating temperature and 'oops, too late'. There is no gradation between them.
Overheated mine 3 times due to slow coolant leak, with gauge not showing overheat until well past the warning stage. Result - head gasket job. My theory is that once it looses water, the temp sensor is not sitting in water, so only senses steam, which will be just over 100C.
Lesson learnt, and bought an "Engine Guard' that shows exactly your engine (metal) temperature, with a warning buzzer that you can set to any temp.
Dan
This isn’t reserved only to TD5s.
Almost all modern vehicles run the same set up of normalising the gauge.
And gauges don’t read steam - it’s the last boiling fluid going past the sensor that finally triggers it.
If you don’t lose coolant, but overheat - eg. blocked radiator - then the system handles it really well by cutting cylinders to cool itself down - but it needs coolant to reference this.
