Temp gauge
It’s not super common for the early 944 temp gauge itself to fail, but it does happen. More often the problem is upstream: the brass temp sender in the block (the one with two spade terminals), corrosion/loose connections at the sender, or aging grounds and connectors behind the cluster.Poorsche44 wrote: how likely is it for a coolant temp gauge to go bad on an early style 944?
A quick sanity check is to verify the gauge wiring and sender response. The wide spade on that brass sender is the gauge signal (NTC), and the narrow spade is just the overtemp warning light (it shorts to ground around 239F). If the warning light side behaves normally but the gauge is dead or erratic, that still doesn’t automatically mean the gauge is bad, because the gauge side is very sensitive to connector condition and sender resistance.
If you share what it’s doing (pegged hot, stuck cold, jumps around, only moves sometimes), I can point you to the most likely culprit and the fastest test.
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