i need some serious help with my electric problem

[bman2033]

ok i know how many people hate electrical problems and i am one of them cause there is never a real anwser but maybe someone out there has had a similar problem. just to fill u in i have a sr20det swapped in my 95 240sx its the redtop. my issue is that my water temp gauge on my stock cluster rises in heat..... and that it spikes up instantly after i turn the heater fan from off to 1,2,3, or 4. now i know that the temp gauge cant read that fast. it also spikes up when rolling up windows with the switch. it is very annoying that when i am driving that when i turn on my fan to blow heat that the car reads hot, but usually when a car runns hot u can smell it too. im really lost as to what to do. it only heats up when im on the highway, and when i decelerate in gear the temp slowly drops, also if i rev it up really high like 6000 rpm it will also drop. so is it altenator, is it some wiring problem that has been done, do i need a new battery, lol i know that is stupid to ask but i dont know. if anyone lives in maryland and can help look at it that would be great too. thanks

[480sx]

From your post it sounds like you have more than an electrical problem. Are you saying that your car overheats on its own?

It sounds like you have a short somewhere in your wiring harness. If i were you i would first check the spot where the harness goes through the firewall and check for worn wires.

After that i would get an aftermarket coolant temp gage and wire it up directly to your coolant sensor. This would bypass the short, and you could go from there.

[bman2033]

well i would hope that the car does not over heat on its own i have done nothing to it but upgrade the turbo to gt28r and i have a koyo radiator and nisom thermostat. but what your saying is if i buy and temp gauge and hook it up directly then i should see the most accurate read?? thanks for your advice

[bman2033]

let me explain it a little better i hope this helps, when i turn the nob for the fan from off to on all the way up to 4 the needle spikes up to near or over to the hot "H" symbol but when i turn the nob to off the heat needle goes back down. I can turn it on off on off on off and then needle will go up down up down up down. Same thing when i mess with the windows trigger for the windows to go up, when the windows are already rooled up all the way and cant go up anymore and i pull up the trigger to make the windows go up the needle will spike up too, then when i let go it will go back down, its really annoying, thanks for help.

[bman2033]

bump

[180fan]

sounds like you've got wires crossing. check under the dash.

[HPR]

Which year SR do you have in your car? If it's an S13 SR20, I would try and take the water temp. sensor from your old KA and swap it with the one on your SR. The S13 water temp. sensors have lower resistance than the S14s, so your S14 gauge cluster reads the sensor as overheating when its actually not and will be reading your water temp. totally wrong.

I have an S14 SR20 in my S13 and when I first drove around, the water temp. gauge didn't move even after driving for a couple hours. I soon found out that the S14 sensor resistance was too high for the S13 cluster to read.

Try that, and if that doesn't work. Get an aftermarket gauge to see if your motor is really overheating. If your car is working perfectly fine, then, its a wiring issue. Hope it helps.

[bman2033]

yeah i think htats what im gonna do is get a aftermarket gauge, i think im going to get al my guages at the same time anyways so at that time when i get all of them hooked up i should see if its really my car overheating or its wire issues. the aftermarket gauges plug in and run a straight wire through so there should not be any interference with wires crossed i hope. thanks for the help.