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Dave at Pelican Parts Dave at Pelican Parts is online now
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Join Date: Dec 1969
Location: Silly-Con Valley
Posts: 14,946
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Porsche Crest

Nope. They work con completely different principles.

The stock sender is a thermistor, a resistor that changes its resistance according to temperature.

The aftermarket sender is a thermocouple, which has two dissimilar metals joined together. It produces a very small voltage across its two connections (versus one on the stock style) that is used to drive the needle on the gauge.

I hear that you can use an oil temperature gauge hooked to the stock head temp sender--but obviously the markings will be all wrong. But at least it can tell you "hotter" or "colder"... I'm not sure what the range of the stock sender is on the gauge; it might only use the first 1/10th of the gauge's available movement, or it might try to use 10x what the gauge can show.

--DD

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Old 07-18-2001, 09:13 AM
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