Help identifying a part

Ok Gents (and Gals if there in here) need help identifying what this is. Looks to be a sensor of sorts but the old motor didn't have it and I have no way of hooking it up. Below is the picture of the culprit and a picture of where I pulled it from. From what I can tell before i took off the intake and started working on it the check engine light wasn't on when it first starts and then would come on when the engine was revved up which would cause the timing to get out because of a bad hydraulic tensioner (I believe this caused the check engine light and has nothing to do with the below sensor)

Unk Sensor

Spot i pulled the sensor from

so in the end if someone can identify it do i need it or can i just put it back in to plug the hole and go on my way?

 

Definitely a temp sensor of some sort but looks like the top of it may be missing a part.

 

Plug all your sensors in that you can. There should be a wire that doesn’t have a mate. Go to your old engine and find the one that matches, (usually color coded to match) and see if it fits in the hole. If not just take that whole sensor bank off of the old engine and put it on the new engine.

Different year engines had different sensors so swapping over could make it run rough as not all sensors and ecu’s are compatible. Luckily the sensor banks fit any 3.0 engine so if you don’t have the correct one and the old engine is gone you could always go to the junkyard and find an engine from the same year and take its sensor bank. That’s usually the easiest way because there are so many different sensors that got used and figureing them out is a pain.

 

Thanks for the input, old motor was turned in for core charge, any broken sensors on the new engine were replaced with sensors from the old engine that were good. All wires on harness are plugged in and there simply is no extra wire for this sensor. still have to put the intake back on tomorrow and start it back up, for now i put the sensor back in due to not wanting to leave a hole; however, when it was running before redoing the timing belt it was running fine until giving it throttle which was because once it got throttle it would go out of time by 36 degrees so i am going with the theory that the hydraulic was out and as soon as throttle was put on the cam would slip and knock it out of time.


will update once i get it put back together and get the timing tweaked.

 

Hmm interesting. Sounds like you might have a 4 sensor truck with a 5 sensor engine. Somewhere between 90 and 95 they went from 5 to 4. They also moved the heater hose from the intake plenum to that sensor bank to replace that 5th sensor. If that’s the case you probably don’t need to worry about it if its running fine other than the timing. That definitely sounds like something in the timing belt isn’t right. What I normally do is I’ll line up all the marks, set the tentioner and rotate it through 2-3 times. If the marks all line up I’ll start it up real quick with the timing belt still exposed and rev it up a bit to make sure. That way if you’re a tooth off or the tentioner isn’t right you can tell immediately and readjust. Just don’t do it for long as you won’t have coolant circulation. As long as the engine remains cold it won’t hurt anything

 

yea that makes sense the old motor was a 91, new one is somewhere between 93-95 (this was determined through research because old engine had a tensioner spring (88-92 i believe) and the new one has a hydraulic tensioner (93-95 i believe) so im pretty happy due to newer engine should mean less miles since the salvage yard i got it from had no info on the motor lol

What i know about the new motor
Came out of an automatic (had to change the flywheel)
Came out of a 2wd vehicle (had to change the oil pan due to it hitting the front diff)
Newer motor due to having a hydraulic tensioner
possibly came from a truck because i left the old motor mounts on it and it sits higher and closer to the firewall (i have my old motor mounts and will one day lift the motor and swap them so it sits more comfortable but for now there is no serious issues as the hood clears and its closer but not too close to the firewall)