If you use a tee you can always drill and tap the threads you need over the NPT threads. Unfortunately the temp sensor port on the housing in the kit is also NPT threads, so if you have a metric thread sensor that does not help much to avoid drill and tap.




However the top of the mating housing has a nice flat on it (towards the engine and at the top of the photo) and the wall thickness is plenty thick to drill and tap, you could definitely put a sensor there.

 

I think having the sensor point down is probably better since it may interfere with the hood closing if it were on the top. I looked at installing in the exiting tee (or Abran's), but the sensor needs more room that is available in order for the hood to close. It's hard to tell in the picture, what's the diameter and pitch of the existing port in the housing?

 

well you could easily make one of these and add hose nipples and place inline with the Throttle body heater. Or get a 3/4" sized housing and place in line with the cabin heater hose.....

Be careful drilling and tapping thin T stat housing if you have tapered thread or certain depth requirements to seat well. There is a small spare outlet port cast into some of the lower intake manifolds, maybe useful.

 

Two questions about this thread.

First, all the discussion has been about sourcing a coolant temp signal. What's the plan for oil pressure?

And more interestingly, what's the deal with the LOW RANGE and DIFF LOCK buttons?

 

I wondered if someone was going to bring that up! Equally surprised there were no comments on the gauge install itself. Regarding the oil pressure sender, that was the easy one. Well, sort of easy. The VDO sender is too large to fit in the spot where the factory oil pressure switch lives so I replaced it with a piece of braided stainless hose, to which I connected a piece of 1" 5052 bar stock that I drilled and tapped. I installed the factory switch and the VDO sender in this little manifold because I wanted the low oil pressure light on the dash to function and even tho the VDO has a connection for this purpose, by using both I have redundancy if one fails and I didn't have to hack the factory harness. All this stuff can come out and revert to the factory setup if I ever want to. Getting into the coolant stream for the temp gauge is proving a formidable challenge however.



The dash switches replace the switches in the TC. Both the Hi/Low and the Diff lock switches are bad and foolishly (or perhaps subconsciously, because I'm cheap), I didn't test them when I swapped the trans/TC from the 04 into the 03. Someday I'll probably replace them but for now I simply installed those two maintained switches in the dash and wired them into the harness. Rather than hack the truck's wiring, which I'm not fond of, I cut the connectors off a junkyard truck and made a small jumper harness that goes in between the truck's main harness and the trans/TC harness. Normally these plugs are connected to each other but now one side plugs into the truck and the other side plugs into the trans harness. If/when I get around to replacing the switches I'll pull this back out, reconnect the two factory plugs together and peel the little labels off the dash switches. For now I can press either of the switches to get the signal to the BCU/SLABS/TCU, and both the HDC and the dash lights for Diff Lock are functional again.



XRAD, I was under the impression that if the heat was off then there would be no, or at least restricted flow through the heater pipes. Is this not the case? I'm going out to have a look at an intake mani and see if I can find a spare port. I looked at the throttle body heater hose port earlier but it's just a small nipple without any threads.
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I used the Innovate Motosports MTX-D gauge with oil temp and pressure. Put a tee in the oil pressure sender line and a tee in the TB heater line for each sensor. Works perfect.

 

What’s the oil pressure sender line? Where did you get the tee for the TBH line? I asked earlier if you knew the thread pitch of your temp sender, maybe you missed it.

Edit: Looking at their site it seems to be either 1/8 NPT or 1/8”-27. VDO makes sensors with that thread size, it would probably makes sense to step down from M10. At least finding a tee for the TBH line would be a bit easier, in fact, I think I may have one from an old fuel pressure kit.

 

I screwed a Tee on a nipple in to the factory oil pressure sender port. I used a hardware store brass block tee in the TBH line, the sender was pipe threads so easy adaptation. The thread pitch on the sensor port of the inline housing is 1/4" NPT. I think the sender's with the MTX-D were 1/8" NPT, maybe 1/16", don't remember.

 

Well this just got infinitely easier. I'm not sure why it took me so long to come around to it, I guess I was hung up on using the old sensor. Thanks for the inspiration, Extinct. The thread in the bleed tee is 1/8-27 and VDO part 323057 is a 300° temp sender with the same thread.



As a bonus it's also a low profile design that won't interfere with the hood closing. Eureka.

 

I disconnected my throttle body heater and planned to put a sensor into the outlet (at the lower manifold), but your idea sounds much simpler.