1987 4runner electric problem aaggghhhh. help please

[theexonerator]

Hello,
I'm new at this. Just bought an 87 4runner, 22re. Its perfect and I love it except for two things. Most important of the two is that the temp gauge doesn't work. The weird part is that it goes right to the center of the gauge, where it should be, but it does this even when the truck is definitely cold. So it is unreliable of course.

The other thing is headlights switch I'm assuming. I pull for the temporary brights and they come on just fine, but when I push the switch forward, the headlights turn off entirely.

Anyways, I'm looking for any type of help because I don't really know what I'm doing. I've just never worked on toyotas before and kind of suck at electronics.
I'm in Boulder, CO right now, heading to Salt Lake City on monday hopefully, and would really appreciate some local help in either of these places if there is any to be had.

Hit me back because I'm an without some help.

[theexonerator]

Oh also, I'm thinking it would probably be easiest to just bypass the temp gauge problem and add an aftermarket one. Any thoughts?

[corax]

any new owner of an older Toyota should be required to spend a few hours reading through Roger Brown's site 4crawler

read this for your headlight issue

[corax]

I used to have the same thing with the temp gauge, it would usually read correctly if I hit the plastic on top of the inst cluster trim. I ended up taking the cluster apart, removed the temp gauge and cleaned each and every electrical contact (pencil eraser works well) - that seemed to make it much better

Probably easier and more accurate to just put an after market gauge on the dash

[theexonerator]

Thank you corax. I'm going outside to get into it now

[corax]

use some emory cloth or very fine grit sandpaper (600 or above) to clean the contacts - be careful not to bend them out of shape. Good luck, I hope you can fix it for free

[theexonerator]

Well that worked perfectly for the headlights. Thanks very much again.
Haven't tried smacking the plastic, but maybe.
Not sure exactly what I'm doing with the aftermarket temp gauge, but I bought one, and I'm going to try to hook it up tomorrow maybe.

[Robinhood4x4]

Something to keep in mind is that the toyota temp gauge doesn't track the temperature precisely as it goes up and down. When the temp is cold the gauge will obviously go up to the middle as the temperature goes up. However, it will stay in the middle for a wide range of temperatures and won't move higher until it reaches a certain upper temperature limit.

[theexonerator]

Yes, I understand that, but this gauge goes to halfway (normal) as soon as I turn the ignition even if its been sitting overnight in the snow. And it just stays there. That is not a reliable reading if any at all.

[Crinale]

I used to have the same thing with the temp gauge, it would usually read correctly if I hit the plastic on top of the inst cluster trim. I ended up taking the cluster apart, removed the temp gauge and cleaned each and every electrical contact (pencil eraser works well) - that seemed to make it much better

Probably easier and more accurate to just put an after market gauge on the dash

i need to try that... my temp guage works very sporadically... it works fine probably 1 out of 5 times i drive the truck... haha