After two hours of tracing my entire cooling system
from stem to stern I have come up with no reason why
my 89 Westy runs with the temp gauge needle just to
the left of the LED.

But just to assure me, with their van at running temp,
could someone with a thermo gun check the ingoing
coolant hose to the radiator (to the right of the
spare tire) and the outcoming coolant hose just below
it?  No need to remove/wrench anything, just lay on
your back in front of the right front tire, and shoot
up between the spare and the radiator mount behind the
front bumper and aim about four inches short of the
radiator connections. FWIW, mine reads 157F in and 97F
out when the gauge shows as above.

I think either my sender or my gauge is off, as this
appears to actually be a little cooler than past vans
have run when the needle is dead on the LED.

The other reason for the search was to determine if I
have a small leak somewhere, as I have needed to add a
little (750 ml) coolant recently after about 1K of
driving it since buying it this Spring. I did have to
replace a cracked  expansion tank shortly after the
purchase so I know that the coolant was at the upper
level about a month ago following that repair.

Thanks in advance for any help with this.
My name is Stephen.
I am a Vanagon addict and I obsess over these things.

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