Cool! I love that body style (not as much as mine but for a real pickup its pretty smooth). I was not particularly ever a Dead fan but that truck will bring serious money from someone who is I suspect.

Beautiful. $90/lamp isn't bad. Price out a new ford headlight for any of the late-model cars :)

Edit: $400 off the pricing

490? per lamp? I am lost at your meaning. Glad you like them.

Not sure if your conversion kit is similar to what mine was. For me I had to carefully enlarge the bulb socket hole in the reflector to enable them. Care was required to not distort the reflector.

I would not think there are many if any other bulb socket conversion kits out there. I just do not know though. Very limited demand item in my opinion. Still in our society it seems someone will always make a semi copy of just about anything.

Oh, yes, I see two places for wires that look to be for the temp gauge....on the driver side of the head near the glows and at the t stat....which is for the temp gauge?

Today I went by the glass shop and saw all my glass for the cab laid out flat. The lovely curved side glass edge is polished like a diamond. I picked up the frames for the vent windows and the side windows to clean and paint them tomorrow. I also ordered a rear view mirror which was originally for a Daimler (? not sure) but it looks like it will work for me and has an adjustable base so it can be slid up or down to get ideal height. The rear window of the CE is about the size of a large loaf of wonder bread so the mirror will have to be positioned just so to see anything. The mirror also has the dimming feature for night time driving.

I have a new electric temp gauge. It is a generic gauge. Will it work with the original Mercedes sending unit?

I have no ideal. The instrument manufacturer will spell out the ressitance range calibration required. You have to find out if the old sensor has the same range of resistance to temperatures comparison.

My guess is it is unlikely unless there was an industry standard adopted years ago. Might have been as far as I know. Someone on our site may have used aftermarket gauge setups and knows as you hope.

The instrument manufactures web site just might have the values you need. The Mercedes shop manual may have the values to expect when servicing the original temperature gauge as well. Having both values of course will address any compatability issues.

Or resistance measure the Mercedes sensor in place. compare this with the gauge literature on their website or literature if there. I doubt the instrument itself has any owner accessable adjustment.

The only good thing is all temperature sensor manufacturers may use the same metal to change resistance in the sender. So all senders may be Linear changing at the same rate in comparison to each other. So much will depend if they all used the same portion of the resistance range to operate on.

This also gives some hope the gauge may have a range adjustment. You have to make sure if you see a screw on the gauge before adjusting it if accesable it is to to match the sender.

You have a chance though as lacking any provision to put the gauge on the same resistance scale. They would have suggested or supplied a new sender. Or there is a real possibility of a general industry standard gains strength.

Again I plead my ignorance in this area but logically as I see it. If there is still any logic left in me.

Perhaps not the answer you seek but my wife does this to me as well periodically. Have a good weekend Tom.

Thanks Barry! Its always good to hear your thoughts, as you know a lot of details about how things work.

Have an excellent father's day....at least it is here.;)

Might be possible to drill and tap an existing MB sensor to take the correct sensor matched to the gauge. It's hard to tell from pictures but there might be enough meat left after drilling out the old sensor core to tap for a smaller current VDO or whatever gauge you might have. And if not, certainly the larger fitting could be drilled and tapped for a NPT fitting and maybe an adapter to get to the right size. See image

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...606_165611.jpg

Easy to test with a trip to the junk yard to grab a couple of test pieces so you don't screw up the ones on the engine if it doesn't work.

Two questions:
1. you believe the sensor has to be matched to the sender?
2. Do you believe I'll get a good reading from the side location or the t stat location?

Thanks for responding!

There are a wide variety of different senders that have a different resistance profile. The gauge needs to be matched to the sender to read properly.

A quick check as illustration showed the following resistances for 100C among different senders - 177, 2070, 185, 720, 1385

You'll get a better reading from the side of the engine rather than the thermostat housing.

Most gauges also have a poteniometer (screw looking socket) on them as well (for calibration at the factory), though it can be easier to throw one in-line and calibrate with known values (e.g. when putting a v6 toyota tachometer on a 4cyl).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._resistors.jpg

Like Barry mentioned the conductive material is usually the same between manufacturers and thus has parallel resistance vs temperature curves; so you can use a simple inline resistor if you calculate the difference in value before hand. Do you know the resistance on the initial 'Stude temp sender?

The only other thing you need to factor in is is your gauge made for a thermistor (Sending unit) with a negative temperature cooefficient (NTC) or a positive one (PTC)? (Basically does it have less resistance when heated or more?)

Here's where I grabbed that data:
http://www.autoshop101.com/forms/h15.pdf


(FWIW: I still have both the merc wired underhood with the toyota gauge in the dash using separate (matched) senders on mine. )

If you look on my build thread there's a pic of mine with an aftermarket sensor in the stock M-B location. I went to the Parker store with the M-B sensor and the aftermarket sensor and they handed me a proper adaptor. The M-B thread is about a 1/4" NPT NON-TAPERED pipe thread. So it needs a gasketed base for the adaptor. Anyhow, under $10 and I had a good solution though I did use sealant on the threads which may require a separate ground wire (I'll try it and see).

Dan

You have the designed sender where Tom has not yet. He is trying to figure out if he can use the Mercedes sender for his aftermarket gauge. He has little choice than to do some homework I suspect.