It is worth considering. I’ve actually been having a problem with the temp gauge and sensor for several months. My sensor quit working and personally I don’t like not knowing how hot or cool my engine is operating, so I replaced the sensor. When I did that the truck would start normal , run a few seconds then the gauge would redline and truck would quit. I figured faulty sensor so got another one. Truck would start normal, run for about a minute then redline again and truck would shut off. So I just unhooked the temp wire from the sensor and have been driving it like that. Now the gauge is redlining without even being hooked up and truck won’t start. There has to be a hot short somewhere I’m thinking
I completely agree on wanting to know the actual engine temp. But I am not aware (someone correct me if I am wrong) of an ignition cutoff based on engine temp in these trucks. Oil pressure cutoff is a thing, but as far as I know, you could theoretically overheat your engine until it got so hot that the engine locked up. So, I think it may be coincidental that this problem is accompanied by a no start symptom.
That being said - you can easily test that the sender is working correctly. Remove the sender from the cylinder head. If you have a multimeter, simply set it to the resistance setting, connect one lead to the body of the sender, the other lead to the spade connector (where you hook up the wire), and check the resistance. Then let the sender soak in hot water and watch the resistance change, will work the same way in reverse if you use cold water.
These senders have a range they work in, something like 200(low)-2k(hot) ohms, or something - not sure the resistance range, but it can be found online. I may also have that backwards, but it doesn't matter.
If the sender is doing its job, then the next weakest link is the gauge itself. As I stated above, my gauge is the same way. It's a lot easier to slap a mechanical gauge in than rip apart the cluster to swap to a new gauge. Plus the mechanical is going to be more accurate than an electrical resistive sender from the 80s. Hell, a lot of these trucks simply came with a dummy light(warning light) that would just come on when the engine was above a certain temp.
If you need assistance with wiring let me know. I just got done doing all this a couple months ago (minus swapping my gauge for a new one)
