It is in the t-stat housing..
but that's bolted to the engine in both waterboxer versions ..
so I wouldn't call it remote.

and you're right ......a very large sudden coolant loss might not be shown
by the temp gauge ,
and perhaps that's why VW put a level sensor function in too, on 83 and up
water-cooled vanagons.

the LED will also flash with a very high temp reading as well.
to draw your attention to the gauge.

early vans are wired a bit weird, in that if the level function goes off, it
pegs the needle to max.
They fixed that in 85
Scott
www.turbovans.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Edward Maglott" <emaglott3@GMAIL.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 5:35 PM
Subject: flashing coolant light purpose

>I thought the reason for the low coolant light was that the temp
> sender for the gauge is not in the engine like in a normal car.  It's
> remote in the thermostat housing.  So if you get a sudden loss of
> coolant the gauge might not even register elevated temp because there
> would be no hot coolant hitting the sender.  Is this right?
>
> Thanks,
> Edward
>
> At 11:04 AM 9/21/2011, Don Hanson wrote:
>>  I probably would not even own my vanagon now if I'd heeded that LED
>> warning
>>light, which was flashing when I bought the van near Tacoma and drove a
>>few
>>hundred miles home.  In fact, it may *still* be flashing, over 65k miles
>>later...I just taped it over, after about 3 frustrating attempts to make
>>it
>>work consistently and correctly.