My outside temp indicator runs a consistant 4 degrees too high. Is there an adjustment or a method for recalabration?

 

As long as you know the outside temperature anyway, I think the best and most accurate method would be to take a calculator along with you and subtract, oh, lets see, about 4 degrees from what your outside temp indicator says.

 

Actually, that is a good question, mine seems to read a little high too. I know in osme other vehicles I have owned there is about a +- 5 degree adjustment that can be made. I have yet to learn of a way to do this on the Crossfire.

 

Mine has been reading about 10 degrees hotter than the outside temp. It has been reading 110-120, although it's barely 107.

Does anyone know where the sensor lives?

 

I can do the math in my head. I guess I just want something that's supposed to work to work properly.

 

What are you comparing the cars reading with ? Is it the temp broadcasted on the radio, or maybe the temp on the bank sign ? I don't think that their very accurate and the temp on the radio is in whatever part of the city the station is.

The only way to find out the right temp would be to park the car in the shade and have an accurate thermometer to compare it with. Even this would be difficult because to get a good reading on the car it should be moving, otherwise your engine heat would have an affect on the sensor. I always feel that if I'm within + - 3 degrees of a bank sign temp or radio temp that's about the best I'll get.

 

try mounting the sensor in a shaded area, as I think it is exposed to the sun

 

The sensor is the little stick looking thing protruding out of the driver side lower grille.
I find mine is accurate once I'm out of traffic.

 

Same here.......

 

I have a big wall thermometer in my garage, an IAT gauge along with the OAT gauge on the instrument cluster. When parked in the garage – all three will read the same temp... (on cold start)


But not when parked out in the sun..

 

Put sensor in ice water it should read 32 deg's. That is the only test you can do. There is no adjustment. The sensor is a variable resistor that changes resistance with temp.

 

^ Obviously thats what the sensor itself is doing, but what happens after that? Previous experience with Honda products has let me know that there is a signal conditioner that can be tweaked by the customer for +- a few degrees.

 

Just blowing some steam but the lack of a compass in my Crossfire is much more of a problem to me than my outdoor temp reading being off a few degrees.

 

There is no adjustment...

When mine was off by up to 10 deg's they replaced the sensor. It is good now. The main problem is the sensor location. The road surface gets very hot and radiates the heat up. That causes the temp. to read high...

I find that mine is much closer to the correct temp. on not so sunny days. But that doesn't happen much here in Fl.

 

Road conditions, hot parking lot vs, grass can swing it. Also idling a long time, the engine heat can affect it as well. There's many a time I come out to start the car and it says over 100 degrees, especially at work. Once I get moving, the temp comes down to ambient.

The compass bit is really good though....


Justin

 

Hah! New undisputable evidence of global warming, errr, climate change!

I wish I had thought of calibrating the temperature probe in ice water. I feel a little em-bare-assed having calibrated at 98.6 deg F doing it the old fashioned way.

The only way the temperature reading will be accurate is if there isn't heat convection (from the road surface on a sunny day, or from the engine when idling).

 

LOL Rob. Now I'm going to have to get THAT image out of my mind.

Some people in your neighborhood there in Maryland were wondering what you were doing in your driveway with your pants down backed up to your Crossfire. Now they know that you were "calibrating". Good thing the cops didn't drive by, you would have had some explaining to do. " But you see officer, there's this Forum on the internet and they were asking about the temperature readout...............................

 

Or how about, "Hey Officer, good news, it looks like my fever finally broke!"

 

Mine reads accurate up to about 70-75. Over 75 it jumps about 5 degrees, on warm days over 80, it reads 90-100. It doesn't matter if it's during the day or at night. It irritates me as well. I need to have it cahnged out before the warranty runs out.

 

Iam just writing here as I have not done this to my ambient air sensor but they are typically negative temperature coefficient thermistors, phew. The NTC sensor changes its resistance with temp and as it gets colder the readings are higher resistance.

If yours is reading too high, its resistive reading would be too low, less resistance than the chart would want in your computer.

The sensor pops into and out of the grill on the drivers side, its a black probe. There are two wires going to it and I would cut one wire, and then confirm that its readings go max negative or low temp.

Then locate a resistor like at radio shack for less than a buck and place it in series, connect it to the wire you cut with one end of the resistor going to each of the ends of the wire you cut. Start with about 1000 ohms and see if that is enough or if you need to add more. You cant add too much or two little resistance, it wont induce a failure, so experiment a bit and let us know.

If you have an old electronic item / radio; you can harvest resistor parts from there and the color codes ( to decode the value) are on the internet if you wanna learn something new.

If this does not work and goes potty, then no harm and no foul. Just re connect the wire where you cut it and your back to square one.

Enjoy Woody

PS. The resistance would alter the readings of the gauge, however the readings are not linear, less change at low end and more change at the high temp end. You are tweeking it to read more correctly at the range you use more often.

It is possible to make the sensor read higher by adding resistance in parallel (across the sensor) but the resistance would need to be higher like 10,000 ohms.

I did this to my ENGINE air temp sensor while debugging fault codes that made no sense and dealer could not interpret........this is why and when I went off the reservation and started getting into the pieces and part of the crossfire on my own. E W