1982 Scottsdale Questions

The temp sending uinit will be ether in the intake manifold near the water outlet/thermostat housing or in the the left head. I would suspect its in the left head, check the motor mounts, and follow the wire back to look for a short, pinch. I say this because of the reverse drive nuetral statement.

60 psi cold at idle is fine, half way point should be 40 psi and again thats fine, should read close to 60 psi hot at highway speed if its in good shape.

Chilton's used to have a pretty good manual available, they were aprox. 8x10 dimension, blue gray colored cover, newsprint pages. They were specific to vehicle models. They also had a cheaper version, usually white with some kind of vertical stripes about 6x8 dimension and covered just the basics of a range of vehicles, like all light duty trucks in one manual. Best bet for vacuum diagrams is hope you library has Mitchell Vacuum diagram manuals. Mitchell also put out a very good wiring diagram manual as well.

Whitelightning

Can't help ya with the fuel gauge, mine took a crap too, along with the voltmeter, water temp,oil pressure, ammeter......etc,etc I have more important things to monitor now like: nitrous pressure,fuel pressure, vacuum,rpm and so on,so on When the oil is cold it will have higher pressure then as the motor warms it will level out.....10 psi for every 1,000 rpm is normally safe, most engines have more oil pressure than they really need.

Thanks for the response. I didn't figure the oil pressure was too big a deal but thought that having high pressure might indicate some kind of blockage. Seems like gauge and instrument malfunction is fairly common on these but I'm planning to keep this truck for a long time so I'll eventually get it fixed. Seems like being an 82 with that high of oil pressure probably means that it's been rebuilt somewhere along the way - the odo says ~47K but I assume that it's 147K and hope it's not 247K :).

Thanks again.

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Yeah, I see a green wire coming out from under the air cleaner but haven't had it off to see where it leads - I suspect that this is it though, the one on the other side goes to the choke. All that I have around the thermostat housing is stuff with vacuum lines going to them.

Yeah, it goes up there pretty high on the highway which again makes me suspect a rebuild at some point. At idle when hot it goes down to just above the first mark. I'm probably going to change the engine out eventually, probably a 327 or maybe a 350. I just don't want something catastrophic to happen where I _have_ to change it before I'm ready :).

When I used to live in Phoenix the library had all that stuff, I'm in OKC now and I'm not sure what they have but I imagine I can find out. The Haynes manual that came with the truck seems to gloss over a lot of the details that I'm looking for.

Thanks for the info.

That's possible, the mains and rods hold the pressure so a rebuild could be in it's history. A good way to tell how tight a motor is do a oil/filter change and listen carefully to the bottom end before oil pressure builds, if there's any knocking then the babbit is sufficiently worn of the shell and it's time for some fresh inserts which can be installed if the journals are not scored or grooved w/o dropping the crank.