Recently I noticed that my trans temp guage will jump violently all over the place going from 0 to 170, 180, sporaticly what could the problem be, bad sensor?

 

bad sensor maybe, but more likely a poor connection somewhere [connection breaks and temp drops to 0, then reconnects going to 170-180]. clean all your connections and reconnect everything [maybe put some dielectric gel on the terminals] and see if that fixes it

 

Do you have any codes? I would think a bad sensor would trigger a code of some sort. Have you tried the instrament cluster keyon test? With the truck off you hold the trip reset button down for 10 seconds and then keyon...at least thats how I remember it.