I acquire some vdo gauges (volt, oil pressure and oil temp) off of a VW rabbit from a friend and it doesn't seem to work correctly on my CRX. The only one that works fine is the volt gauges. I have both the oil sender and oil temp sensor (from the rabbit) for the other two gauges, but it's acting weird. After wiring it all in, I turn my ignition to ACC and the pressure gauge shoots to max and doesn't want to back down even when I turn off the ignition unless I unplug wiring harness from the gauge. I've try two oil pressure sender and it's doing the same. The oil temp kinda stay at the coldest with just a twitch, maybe because I haven't turn it long enough.

I'm pretty sure all my wirings are correct. There are only 3 wires each on the oil temp and oil sensor gauges (ignit., grnd and signal). So any suggestion as to what may fix it would be appreciated.

 

Yes there are ign, ground, signal for the gauge, but you need to ground the sending unit aswell if not screwed into the block. I ran into the same problem. After grounding the sending units, they work fine.

 

Kool, I'll try that. Thanks

 

how would you go about grounding the sending unit in that manner? Just ziptie a wire to it? solder?

My gauge does messed up things like bounce around. The signal wire is on a threaded post on the sender, just attach the ground there?

 

How do you ground this oil sending unit? Cause it's not directly into the engine block. I've tried soldering a ground wire from oil sender to the block, but it's still the same.

How did you do yours?

 

Ah, never mind.
I got it fix. I ran a wire from my T's into a good ground and whoala.....everything works beautifully.