Not Overheating

We had friends in from out of town over the long weekend, so there wasn’t much that happened to Pandora. Other than I found out that she wasn’t actually overheating. And I put new windshield wiper blades on. And that wiper blades for old cars like this are kind of hard to find now. But mostly that she doesn’t seem to be overheating. How do I know this? Because I wanted to buy an actual temperature gauge to help troubleshoot her overheating problems! Yup.

A grocery run was required Saturday morning. While I was arming myself with keys, wallet, etc., I was thinking about how weird it was that she ran for a couple of hours in lots of different driving conditions ranging from idling in traffic to interstate speeds, and only got hot at the end of the trip. But she never ran like she was hot, other than the hard starting bit. It just felt off to me. The previous evening I ordered a cheap set of gauges to supplement the idiot lights she came with. So while putting on my shoes, I decided two things. First, Wifey and I were going to take the Camaro to the store, since she hadn’t been there for the real ride, and Second, I was going to make sure I knew where the temperature sender was. I had left the hood up after the first trip and when I looked at the head between cylinders 1 and 3, I saw this!

The little gold and red pin sticking out just above center and to the right is the temperature sender connector. The wire that should attach to it is the melted blob with a wire sticking out resting on the exhaust manifold. The wire fell off on my way home and as it melted, the connector inside would short out by varying degrees against the exhaust, giving me the flickering light.

So the trip to the store was uneventful. I still have stuff that needs attention. There’s still that occasional popping sound from the front wheel. I have new wipers, but the motor seems to have died. And the horns are unplugged. But since plugging them in made no difference in how they worked, I suppose I had a reason for unplugging them in the mid-90’s. I’m running out of inexpensive things to fix on her.