Who can I get to install a longer capillary tube on my 1934 Plymouth water temp. gauge? Reed1944@aol.com or text to 727 420 8854
Broken Temperature Gauge The temperature gauge is a “mechanical” unit consisting of a bulb with fluid (ether) mounted in engine head, a gauge head mounted in the instrument cluster on the dash, and a tube connecting the bulb to the gauge head. The gauge head is actually a pressure sensing unit. In operation, the coolant in the engine head heats the working fluid in the sensor bulb. As the engine gets hotter the pressure in the bulb and tubing rises. The dash head unit simply reads the pressure on a scale calibrated in degrees Fahrenheit. A common failure mode is for corrosion to lock the bulb in the engine head. The tubing is twisted off near the bulb when bulb removal is attempted. In this case, the gauge head unit is known to be working properly, the defect is in the tubing and in the loss of fluid from the sealed system. For a more detailed description, a number of articles about the operation of this type of temperature gauge have appeared in Skinned Knuckles over the years. The earliest article I have is from the March 1984 issue. Replacement parts Mechanical temperature gauges are still being manufactured and available in most auto parts stores. The goal of this procedure is to graft a new bulb (with fluid) and tube onto the old gauge head. Find a gauge that has a spiral wound protective cover over the tube. There are some that use a plastic coating. While these can be made to work, they will not look correct. As of October 2004, it is possible to find a suitable donor gauge in California auto supply stores for about $15. The Procedure Caution: The working fluid in the gauge is ether, a highly flammable substance. Do not have any open flame near your work area. Do not use a torch for the soldering operations. Make up a sleeve from some tubing. In this case the capillary on the donor gauge had a slip fit into 1/16" inside diameter copper tubing found at the local hardware store. The capillary on the original gauge was slightly larger, so the 3/4" long sleeve was drilled out halfway through to make a slip fit for the old capillary. To keep the ether from escaping we use some crushed ice and salt to create a “cold bath” for the sensing bulb. And we might as well be chilling the bulb while we do all the other preparation work. Trim the capillary tubing on the old gauge a couple of inches from the gauge head. Make sure that the tubing has not been closed off when trimming to length. We might as well do as much as we can before cutting open the donor gauge. So the next step is to “tin” the capillary on the old gauge near the cut. You don’t want to tin all the way to the cut as you don’t want to encourage solder to fill the capillary opening. Now we can attach the sleeve to the tinned capillary. In this case we seated the capillary tubing to the limit that we opened up the diameter by drilling. Again we want to make sure we have not closed off the capillary. A piece of stiff wire small diameter can be used to verify that the capillary is not clogged with solder. Cut the protective spring on the donor gauge capillary near the point marked for the length you need (indicated by the tape). In the spirit of doing as much work as possible before breaking the seal on the donor unit, we now tin the part of the capillary that will be inserted in the sleeve. Almost done! Verify that the sensor bulb is still in the ice solution. Cut the capillary tubing, assure that the center is open and now solder it into the sleeve. Before removing the sensor bulb from the ice solution, double, triple and quadruple check that you have a good solder joint with no voids or other possible leaks on both sides of the sleeve. When you are happy with your work it is time to check the function. Immerse the sensor bulb in boiling water while observing the needle of the gauge. It should move up to the 212° F mark. While observing the dial mechanism, you might want to cycle the sensor bulb between the ice solution and boiling water a few times to verify that nothing is binding the movement. The gauge should now be restored to operation. Calibration If the gauge does not read 212° F in boiling water you have two options: Note the error and live with it. Attempt to adjust the gauge head unit. The gauge head is a Bourdon tube connected to the indicator by a linkage. The Bourdon tube is simply a flattened tube rolled into a coil. As pressure is applied the tube slightly unwinds. When the pressure is removed, the coiled tube returns to its original position. Adjustment is made by bringing the sensing bulb to a known temperature by placing it in boiling water (212°F) then bending the linkage that connects the Bourdon tube to the indicator. Do not bend the Bourdon tube itself. [Chrysler 1953 page 70] States that it is possible to adjust the gauge if its reading is less than 30° different than the actual temperature. If you have any doubts about the adjustment operation, then don't do it. You can buy replacement sensing bulbs and tubes at any auto supply store. Getting an original gauge dash head is a lot harder.
Bump, this came up on another board a while back. Folks did not believe me. I think it was @Nads that I saw post it first?
Gotta love a bourbon tube. I always heard that sucking alcohol through a straw gave you a pretty bad headache.
A suggestion if repairing an existing cap tube; when cutting the tube, use a small file (preferably a triangular file) and file half way through the tube. This exposes the inside of the tube. Then, VERY CAREFULLY bend the tube back and forth until the tube breaks in two. This will help eliminate the possibility of crushing the tube internally. If done properly you will have a perfectly clean, round hole. Then slip both pieces to be soldered into the sleeve (coupling), leaving a slight gap between the tube in case there isn't perfect alignment. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Hi...i am a new user here. As per my knowledge the coolant in the engine head heats the working fluid in the sensor bulb. As the engine gets hotter the pressure in the bulb and tubing rises. The dash head unit simply reads the pressure on a scale calibrated in degrees Fahrenheit.A common failure mode is for corrosion to lock the bulb in the engine head. The tubing is twisted off near the bulb when bulb removal is attempted. In this case, the gauge head unit is known to be working properly, the defect is in the tubing and in the loss of fluid from the sealed system.
I need mine repaired. I have talked to 3 gauge repair shops including Williamsons. The cost to repair the tube is 300 bucks.
For $300 it would be worth trying it yourself, following the instructions in the second post. Just cut the tube on the original gauge far enough away from the gage so if it doesn't work, someone else can still fix it.
the trick is to not let it escape. like in the above description I put the bulb in ice water to keep the ether liquid, placed the ice bath lower than the work area to let gravity keep it in the bulb, had all prep work done so assembly would be quick and uninterrupted and cut the donor tube as long as practical to keep the open end and heat as far from the liquid ether as possible
Even still.... I've done this "successfully" several times. And from my experience, the ether volume in a cheap donor is not enough volume to accurately move a vintage Stewart Warner gauge anywhere near accurate. It will "boil" at like 140*F. From my understanding, a greater volume of ether is needed. How do you get the ether in there and where do you get the ether at that point? I never got that far down the rabbit hole to try. Some say starting fluid contains ether, but I'm not sure it would be worth the risk to try. For the times I've tried and got a pretty lousy result, $300 to fix it seems cheap....
I wonder if a less expensive vintage Stewart Warner donor might work better with the rarer vintage Stewart Warner gauges?
Starting fluid is ether, so you may be on to something. Maybe you could shoot some into the gauge and down the capillary tube to makeup what was lost, and make the gauge read more accurately.
I believe you could, but you'd want the gauge scale to be the same I think (like on some SWs the low end of the scale is 40*F, where on a different gauge, low end is 100*F. If it fails, you've scrapped a functional SW gauge though). The cheap donor gauge capillary tubes are TINY. You'd want to open up the sending unit side and fill from there, even at that, I dunno how successful that would be. You'd want to do some calculations to have a target volume before-hand, and have some sort of needle-like syringe to inject the ether.
Adding ether to a smaller that original sensing bulb might be a waste of time. For a given size bourdon tube you need a matching volume of ether in the sensing bulb. You may not be able to get enough ether in a small bulb.
So I person needs to find a sensing bulb the same size as the original, which may be hard, if the original is already gone. I just measured the two SW gauges I have, and the bulb is about 1 3/4" long. So SW gauges may all have the same bulb size. If you have one, measure it and report back.
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