Thread: Stock Water Temp Gauge

I'm planning on taking out the stock water temp gauge and putting something much more useful in that location... a digital aftermarket gauge.

Do you guys know if the ECU uses the readings from the stock gauge to kick on the fans etc? Or does the stock gauge get it's information from ECU after ECU already used the information from sensors?

i think it dose but im not 100% but gspec sell this adapter the link custom steel Water Temp Adapter, SR20 (pass side)

I BELIEVE the ECU reads from the Coolant Temperature Sensor. The water temp gauge doesnt do anything but show you where approximately the water temp is at. It does a pretty lame job of doing that too.

There are two sensors side by side on the motor. The ecu uses the two wire, the gauge uses the single wire. Chriscar has a nice writeup:

Gauge installation writeup - Gauges - SR20 Forum

I already have it tapped to the coolant lines, so no need for that



I hope so :-D



You know I was wondering why that was the case, and if I knew better I would just wire my gauge to that hole, instead of tapping a new hole!

I've seen that writeup, that's where I'm getting the idea form, but I was told that the stock gauge might control the fans, and killing it might require an external fan controller.

I'm sure the fans run off the 2 wire sensor going to the ecu. I had the wrong (b13) sensor in my G20 when we first did a RR swap. The gauge was reading hot off the chart, but temps were fine. I know this because I had a Techtom mdm-100 hooked up. The fans also cycled on just over 205 and back off at around 190 when car was sitting in the driveway. Once I got the correct sending unit, the gauge in the dash showed the normal readings.

And as was previously mentioned, the factory gauge isn't really a gauge at all, more like a fancy idiot light. Your "normal" position is anywhere from 125 to around 215ish, then above that it moves to a "high" position. A real gauge is indeed the correct answer if you really want to know what temps you are running.

Sweet, thats great to hear, I might actually try and see if my gauge would fit into the stock location, that way I don't have to run a wire from the front of the engine.

Anyone against hacking up the gauge cluster?

Did you ever go through with it? I'm going to try the same thing soon