Is it my cluster or an electrical problem?

What’s up everyone, I have a problem…my radiator busted on the bottom so I ordered a new one, all aluminum. I have an automatic transmission, so I had to buy a trans cooler and installed that. The thermostat and the fan switch on the thermo housing, and the two sensors on the head, I think it’s ECM and the thermo gauge sensor/sender…the thermo fan switch and ECM sensor I got from dealer and couldn’t find the thermo gauge sensor/sender so I got that from an auto parts store locally…after all of this…my gauge is acting all crazy, sometimes it will look normal, then after the car is driven for a little while the needle stays past the halfway mark, and it will get pretty close to the overheating mark, but will never get to that point. If I punch the gas the needle will go back down, and when I slow down to a stop sign or light it will climb back up again. Then lets say I park the car for like ten minutes. When I get back in and start the car the needle will be at the optimal position for a minute or so and then go back to past half way. My buddy says my car isn’t overheating so I shouldn’t worry about that. He says that it’s most possibly the temp gauge on the cluster malfunctioned. Oh and the reason why I say it could be some sort of electrical issue is because if I press the moonroof button to close, the temp gauge will jump up as I’m pressing the button, after I get my finger off the button, the gauge will go back down to a little over the half way mark again. Also, if I press the switch up to close my window, sometimes the gauge will actually go down, so that’s my issue. Oh and my buddy had a DB2 he parted out and had a cluster laying around he said I can use it to diagnose whether it’s the cluster or not…now my question is, since I’ve got a 93 GS automatic, and the DB2 is obviously a manual, will there be an issue with swapping that cluster into mine or will it not work since it’s not an automatic cluster? I don’t want to open up my dash right away if I don’t need to.

I found it!!

Ok…so I was hoping someone would reply to my posting by today but in any case I swapped out the cluster anyway…same shit started happening again…so I put my cluster back in…put everything back together. Then went to the temp gauge sender plug and noticed that it’s frayed to shit…probably hanging by a few strings of wire. So I think there in lays the problem it’s the damn temp gauge sender wire…lol…I guess after much trial and much error you will eventually get to the root cause of the problem. So for anyone who is having an erratic temperature gauge fluctuation where it jumps up past halfway that’s probably the issue…CHECK THE WIRE LOL…oh and I haven’t fixed it yet…I will have an update by tomorrow hopefully. Hope this helps someone else.

Wtf!!!

Fixed the wire (sort of)…I cut off the temp sending unit where it was frayed and soldered on a new wire onto the clip…then soldered that onto the main yellow/green wire which goes to the temp sending unit. When I plugged it in…the temp gauge SHOT UP like a rocket to past the red H…so now I’m back to square one…I’ve got the Haynes manual, and I’m looking at the wiring diagram for the gauges and could it be that there is actually a bad ground somewhere?? Or could it be that the yellow/green wire is screwed up somehow? I’m thinking maybe I have to run a direct wire from the temp sender unit to the gauge cluster. If anyone has any idea or suggestions, please let me know. I’d really appreciate it.