I thought there were two senders for the gauge -- one in the water
for the actual meter, the other in the cylinder head to light the LED
when a overtemperature condition occurred.

The problem with putting the temperature sender in the water is of
course that if you lose your water you also have lost what you are
measuring.  I guess that's what the blinking "low coolant" LED is for...

Am I thinking of a different engine that had the two sensors?  If not
would there be a way to retrofit a cylinder head temperature sensor?

Allan

On Dec 2, 2007, at 8:44 PM, robert feller wrote:

> I respect Scott's comment but i will decent on this one.
>
> We went the 100% crazy route when we thought my gauge was reading
> high (7/8)
> and sometimes red light on warm days. New sensor, stat, radiator,
> wiring
> check, voltage stabilizer/reguator ect. Finally got the infered gun
> and
> compared locations and temps to my buddies 2.1L and we took exact temp
> readings but our gauges showed different data. it's hard to say
> what is
> "dead on" with these gauges. I did tons of research with Bentley,
> VDO and VW
> tech manuals trying to figure out all Ohm readings for a given
> temp. Lot of
> work and poor data out there to find that different resources gave
> slightly
> different Ohm readings for arbitrary gauge readings. I've got the
> sources
> for those interested.
>
> Combine this to a gauge that reacts wide and slow due to the
> radiator being
> so far forward and I've never been a huge fan of the temp gauge on
> these
> things for the often OVERCOOLED vanagon engine.
>
>