5000cs Turbo

Water temperature gauge in the dash is dead no reading.

Can you damage the water temperature sending unit by cleaning it (with a wire rotary brush on a drill), or by mixing up the connecting wires (does it matter what wire connects to what terminal on the sensor, can you short it out?)

Put in a new radiator the other day, took the thermo switch (for the fan) off the old radiator and put it on the new one. But first cleaned it a bit with a wire rotary brush on a drill, noticed that the water temperature sending (looks like a big hex bolt with connection pins for the wires on the under side, on side of the cylinder head) had some scale build up, so cleaned it as well (same wires brush method). Put everything back together no problem, however not sure if I miswired the water temp. sensor. It is the updated one with 3 pin terminals (opposed to the original 4 pin type), it was wired with quick disconnects because the old connector was in bad shape, so it would be easy to mix up the wires if one did not note them (if each wire does a specific pin to connect to, how do I determine this now?). Fired the car up to check out everything and noticed that the Temp. gauge was giving no reading, and it took a really long time for the fan to kick on.

 

Check this page on SJMautotechnik.
http://www.sjmautotechnik.com/troubl...ing.html#gauge