Just bought the car and the temp gauge is totally dead, turning on the heat inside the car clearly shows that engine is up at full operation temp.

Have checked the sensor on the head between cyl 1 & 2 drivers side, and the one the on the water pump, found ref values on the shoebox page and the one of the head seems ok (5000ohm) while the water pump sensor was a bit out of spec with 12000ohm.
Have noticed the engine tends to rev itself a little when hot and idling, in case that should point to sensor issue, haven't heard the fans come on yet, but mainly done road travel with the car so far

Wirering ok as far as I can follow them into the harnesses.

If the gauge is bad, are new one’s available and if so where?

Also how reliable are the stock temp gauge in general? And how common with aftermarket solutions reg temp gauge on these cars?

Thanks

 

replace the sensor at the water pump, its not happy. have you tried grounding the wire at the head and seen if the gage goes to hot reading. should max the temp at the gage when grounded. if not test wire at gage to see if its showing ground when wire at sensor is grounded. if so I would say gage is bad.

 

Thanks Craby
Replacing the sensor at the water pump is at top of my list, and will do the grounding test you suggest on the other one , and smart to ground the gauge directly to rule out bad cable

As I'm in Europe shipping and tax is a bit costly, so try to fill my shopping list while at it, I'm a regular at Rockauto