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1972 Travelall Troubleshooting

PostPosted: Sat Jun 02, 2018 2:22 pm
by PatO
I recently got my 72 Travelall (392 V8) back from the body and paint shop and the temp and oil pressure gauges are going all the way to hot and high (respectively) basically within a minute or two of starting the engine. This was not a problem before I put it in the body/paint shop. Neither would ever give me high readings. My oil levels are normal and the oil was replaced about 500mi ago. There is adequate coolant in the engine as well.
We used a laser thermometer after letting it run for a few minutes and the highest reading we got was about 175. This temp was on the metal housing that the thermostat sits within.
It seems odd that both of these gauges are reading high at the same time. The engine runs fine. Any suggestions for trobleshooting this issue? Possibly the body shop (inadvertently) caused something within the gauges to operate wrong?
The body work done included removing the hood, fenders, and windshield, welding around the windshield at the typical rust areas, but otherwise it was mostly paint work.
Thanks for any advice you guys can pass along before I start blindly replacing parts.

Re: 1972 Travelall Troubleshooting

PostPosted: Sat Jun 02, 2018 3:40 pm
by cornbinder89
Start by attaching a good "bonding" strap between the engine and body, my guess is they left it off when they disassembled it. Without a good bond between the engine and body you can get all kinds of weird things happing. In the worse case it can fry the speedo or throttle cable as the electrons use these cables to make the connection, instead of the aforementioned bonding strap.
There may be other things going on, but by your description, that is what I would look at 1st.

Re: 1972 Travelall Troubleshooting

PostPosted: Sat Jun 02, 2018 4:29 pm
by PatO
Ok thanks. Is there a typical or normal location to find that strap?

Is there a way to determine if the gauge is reading correctly? I ended up leaving the truck at my buddies house because I didn’t want to drive it if the gauges are in fact accurate. 175 didn’t seem like a very high temp for the gauge to be completely pegged out on Hot.

Re: 1972 Travelall Troubleshooting

PostPosted: Fri Jan 03, 2020 8:27 pm
by dongraves
Check under the dash to see if there is a reastat that controls the gages.
Don Graves