I recently charged the AC on my Ranger and the truck usually doesn’t get passed the “N” on the temp gauge where it says “Normal” but today whenever I started running the AC it got up to between the “R” and the “M” on “Normal”
it also started not wanting to start after the truck reached operating temp and I would shut it off and turn it back on while still hot and it would start and immediately bog out and die.
I replaced the “ICM” and it seems to want to start up now but still have the issue of it starting to get hot.
I’ve also noticed that the coolant in the radiator is yellow instead of the green coolant I put in there.
Almost forgot I replaced the temp sensor and thermostat a couple months ago.
is this normal for the truck to reach these temps when running AC?

 

The gauge should read in the middle of the normal range if the thermostat is working well in warm weather. I would guess the new thermostat is why the gauge is reading differently. Leave the A/C off and see if it still goes to the middle of the normal range like it should.