>I'm curious why you presume that the sender that in your words died was
>reading correctly until then.

Hi Mark,

The previous sender/gauge "just felt right to me"...i.e. cruising on flat after warm up it was either just below the LED or over the LED.  No excessive heat wave in the engine bay if opened while hot....if you've ever opened a Vanagon engine bay that was overheating you know what I mean.

Going up steep grades the gauge would climb up a bit, then drop below the LED going down long grades.  In city stop/go traffic it would climb to 70-80% then the rad fan would come on for a minute or two then go off...all normal behavior based on other Vanagons I've owned.

Then one day the old sender just died, it went from working fine to not working at all, no gradual change etc.

I've also heard somewhere that new 1.9 senders often read higher than the ones from 25 years ago....perhaps this is just a rumor...others can respond to this theory.

That is why I'm pointing the finger at the new sender.  Even though the new sender makes the gauge read higher than "normal", the van still drives normal, at least to me.

I'll try your resister trick and let the list know what happens...I probably won't get around to it until next week though....