Perkins 6.354. Overtemp Perkins 6.354. Temp switch

[cbouch]

In the attached picture the circled sender is for the temp guage..is the one next to it the switch for high temp alarm??if not any idea what it is..how do you test it, just short it out and hear the alarm?

 

[High Wire]

The one circled is for the temperature gauge. The one with the quick connect terminal is the alarm.

 

[High Wire]

For the alarm, short the quick connect wire to ground with the engine running and the alarm horn should sound.
The gauge sender testing is more complex. Disconnect the wire by removing the brass nut. With an ohmmeter measure the resistance from the stud to the outer base. Depending on if the sender is for a single or dual station what the resistance should be when cold. Mine is a dual station sender and reads about 450 ohms cold. Ohms go down when temperature goes up.

 

[cbouch]

Thank you High Wire..thought that was the case but just wanted to be sure. Had a problem last summer in that the lower helm temp guage worked but not the upper helm. Assumed that the sending unit was ok because one guage worked..so instead of swapping guages, I just ran a temp wire to the upper helm and it worked. I guess that the original wire broke or it has significant corrosion someplace. I will just leave it as is and permanently string the replacement wire. Again, thanks, cliff

 

[High Wire]

You need to be connected to both. The gauge may “work “ but won’t be accurate if a dual station sender is only connected to one gauge.

 

[cbouch]

Guess I wasn’t clear...lower helm always worked....upper helm did not....ran another wire from sending unit directly to upper helm and now both work. New wire is not shown in the picture.

 

[STB]

Guess I wasn’t clear...lower helm always worked....upper helm did not....ran another wire from sending unit directly to upper helm and now both work. New wire is not shown in the picture.

I think what High Wire may have been trying to communicate is that, because of the way the circuit works, there is a different sender with a different resistance range for single gauge systems than there is for two Guage (e.g., upper and lower) systems.

As a result, if one of your gauges was disconnected by a bad wire or connection, the other gauge would have been the only one in a circuit with a dual gauge sender, so the resistance range of the sender would be wrong for the gauge, and the gauge would not read the correct temperature, even if it did start out cold and increase as the engine warmed up.

 

[cbouch]

Understand..hopefully when they are both connected they will both read the same. Haven’t done that yet.wire strung but ran out of time. All I know is that when I ran a temp wire to the guage it moved to what I thought. Was appropriate for a cold engine running for just a few minutes. Never got it up to temperature so not 100% sure all is ok. Appreciate the clarification.