Hello everyone, my daily driver 98 Maxima SE seems to have a very odd issue. Within the last two weeks I replaced the Alternator, Battery and Thermostat. The alternator was replaced with an ebay used oem. Upon recieving It, I had it checked at advance auto and it checked out good. The battery is a Kirkland maxima specific. Not sure if replacing the battery/alternator caused anything, but after that specific project, I noticed that the temperature gauge would climb up after about 40 mins of normal driving. I alleviated the engine by turning on the heat in the cabin full blast and the temp gauge would go down but not STAY down. Over this past weekend, I replaced the thermostat and gasket with parts from Advance auto. After replacing the thermostat, the temperature gauge now seems to go up when i put a load on the batt/alternator. I noticed that when i press the brake, or turn on the headlights, the temperature gauge will go up. When off the temp gauge will come down after about two seconds. Im wondering if this is a thermostat issue, or a battery issue or whatever this is i just want to figure it out and fix it! Please help me out! If you have any questions let me know. Thank you all. Peace

 

I forgot to mention that I don't have ANY codes. I am also resetting the ECU as we speak, by leaving the battery negative cable disconnected. Any other questions clues or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Psychotic gauges when accessories are used is a sure sign of a ground problem, I have personally seen this many times with aftermarket gauges that are poorly grounded.

 

I appreciate the input bro but could you dive a little deeper into this hypothesis. I don't have any aftermarket gauges. I have a headunit and retrofitted stock bose speakers into a base SE. Im not exactly sure but the previous owner def put in a cat back exhaust, lowering springs and gr-2s, and i believe he also put in a lightweight clutch and flywheel or something, and definitely a short shift. Other than that which is listed there aren't any other aftermarket parts on this car.... I just reconnected the ecu and allowed the car to warm up for a few minutes. Then i took her out on a ride and about five minutes in the temp gauge started dancing. It's almost as though if i put any sort of load on the alternator or battery the gauge reacts. other than this one thing, the car drives damn near perfect. I have a radiator in the mail and will be swapping that out this weekend. If anyone has any clues as to where i could start to fix this problem I would appreciate it very much.

 

You had the alternator and battery both out, both which contain the 2 most important grounds on the whole car. On mine the ground cable from the battery dropped a foot or so and then on it's way to the block has a clamp crimped onto the cable which provides the chassis ground for the rest of the car. These cars are super sensitive to grounds (search ground once) so anything that was moved or disturbed could now be compromised. All of the gauges rely on a resistance reading between the sensor and ground (which if compromised can quite possibly not be consistent nor accurate). Your next question may be that your fuel gauge is fine and this could be because it gets it's resistance to ground reading from an entirely different pare of the car (which may be grounded better). Or maybe I'm completely full of ****.

 

i have this EXACT same problem also replaced the thermostat it stopped happening for about a week then back to the same any electrical load drives the heat guage into the danger zone drives me crazy cant enjoy driving it anymore because im paranoid about the heat. even though im 100% sure the engine isnt hot at all. let me know if you find a fix pls....good thing i own 2 of em so i just drive my black one haha would still be nice to get the other one fixed though.

oh and FYI i also changed the coolant temp sensor and it didnt help either thought i would let you know so you dont waste the 40$ on one.

 

i had the same issue last week.. turned out the ground wire going from the battery to the chassis bolt point needed to be sanded to bare metal and it fixed mt temp gauge issue. here's my thread http://forums.maxima.org/4th-generat...hermostat.html

 

The temp gauge of my 98 SE was acting strangely. Turns out the connection to the sensor at the front of the engine was corroded. Cleaned that up and that fixed the issue. You may want to check that out. I believe it's a fairly common problem.

 

i had this happen to me when the coolant level was low it was reading the air temp inside and not the water temp i topped it off and all was good