Td5 dash into tdi, handbreak light on dash..

Kwakerman said:

Have you tried shorting the sender wire to ground at the sender end, that should send the gauge to FSD

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Sorry fsd meaning? Lol

Full Scale Deflection

Nicked this from retro on another forum I saw you browsing this earlyer with no comment!

The gauge works on resistance, no resistance (ie. short to ground) would be full deflection on the gauge, or full hot if you will. Full resistance (open circuit) means the gauge won't move at all, so full cold. The sender decreases in resistance as water temperature increases. So if you gauge is reading too hot, then there is too much resistance, this could be due to either having the wrong sender (check to see if there's a green plastic ring on it like this) or some extra resistance in the wiring loom (dodgy connection etc.).

So my gauge is getting full resistance/ open circuit. What to do from here???

Kwakerman said:

Full Scale Deflection

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Yes I earthed it and shot to the top.

I agree take wire off temp sender and earth it whilst someone watches the temp gauge needle should go all the way to hot hot hot
How far do you drive it to warm up
The needle sounds like it's energised but I wonder if sender is responding properly
Are we certain of no air locks in coolant system

Galvernisednuts said:

I agree take wire off temp sender and earth it whilst someone watches the temp gauge needle should go all the way to hot hot hot
How far do you drive it to warm up
The needle sounds like it's energised but I wonder if sender is responding properly
Are we certain of no air locks in coolant system

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Yes when earthed it shoots to the top, engine takes about 5 min of driving to warm up fully, I've been driving it for half the day and the gauge just sits at the bottom, no air locks in system lol.

sender & gauge not matched correctly.

The Mad Hat Man said:

sender & gauge not matched correctly.

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Yup using the 300 sender that matches td5 gauge

Ok so correctly wired at gauge and sender wire earthed Max's out the gauge, great that shows the circuit to be good
I would personally look at the sender area
I know you replaced the sender thinking it was faulty but I think there's summit amiss here
Wonder if the senders got an earthing issue
Have you wrapped it in ptfe tape?
Clutching at straws but just running things through here

I'm thinking poor earth for sender body
Faulty sender, although you've tried another :-/
Coolant air lock in head not watering the sender?
Thermostat issue jammed open not warming engine correctly
Ps how is your heater?
Try try try
Hope any above helps

I had a 200 sender to start with And gauge did the same, I then got the correct 300 sender, it's bearmach and had kinda wrapped thread tape stuff already on it.
I'll try get another sender and see what happens, don't really want to buy another td5 gauge incase that's at fault?

Cooling system is fine, no air locks, heater is fine thermostat is fine,

It's just the sender gauge or td5 wiring hahaa

MaxyMan said:

I had a 200 sender to start with And gauge did the same, I then got the correct 300 sender, it's bearmach and had kinda wrapped thread tape stuff already on it.
I'll try get another sender and see what happens, don't really want to buy another td5 gauge incase that's at fault?

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if its a TD5 gauge, then have you thought you might need a TD5 sender?

Bit of a long shot but with engine warm can you run a good earth to the outer casing of the sender
Keep it clear of the centre or near the green insulation
See if this livens up the gauge to somewhere civilised
I've heard of issues with non genuine senders but usually just failures rather than outright not working
Also is engine well earthed, I'm sure it is seen as it starts

The Mad Hat Man said:

if its a TD5 gauge, then have you thought you might need a TD5 sender?

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Td5 gauge runs off ECU, for this conversion the sender input runs through the speedo gauge and various different routes, 300tdi's that are ROW spec run a loom that already has this modification done, the 300 sender matches the modification I've done to the td5 to match how the ROW spec loom uses a 300 sender and to run on td5 gauges. I do believe this is how it works anyway.

Galvernisednuts said:

Bit of a long shot but with engine warm can you run a good earth to the outer casing of the sender
Keep it clear of the centre or near the green insulation
See if this livens up the gauge to somewhere civilised
I've heard of issues with non genuine senders but usually just failures rather than outright not working
Also is engine well earthed, I'm sure it is seen as it starts

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Wich part of the sender should I put the wire to sorry?

Yep read the review and guide
I'm fitting the td5 set up to my 300 soon got the warning panel in already
Yes the wire needs to be calibrated by the speedo before it goes to the gauge otherwise the reading would be wrong
I'm wondering if the wire rework you did has good connections at speedo in case this is pin out and causing an issue

MaxyMan said:

Wich part of the sender should I put the wire to sorry?

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The outer edge where you would attach a spanner, be certain to run a good earth from say the battery or another reliable source

Galvernisednuts said:

Yep read the review and guide
I'm fitting the td5 set up to my 300 soon got the warning panel in already
Yes the wire needs to be calibrated by the speedo before it goes to the gauge otherwise the reading would be wrong
I'm wondering if the wire rework you did has good connections at speedo in case this is pin out and causing an issue

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Yeh I did use high quality wire and good solid connections to the pins.