For the air cooled engines the infrared gun only helps for checking things at idle. The engine can get real hot at highway speeds and as soon as you pull over 50 -100F will be lost at the heads by the time you get off the road and to the back to use that gun. 

Dennis 

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of Neil N
Sent: Thursday, February 6, 2014 6:24 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: air cooled 2.0 1981 Cylinder head temp?

For sure.

Also.... I may be misinformed, but is it possible that the temp sensor at cyl. 3 can get slightly damaged during install? (or re-install?) Maybe give inaccurate readings?

As Scott has commented, an infrared gun is quite useful. I carry one in my Westy.

Neil.

On 2/6/14, SDF ( Scott Daniel Foss ) <scottdaniel@turbovans.com> wrote:

> I was thinking 'up to 400F' ...which is likely when pushing it a bit 
> on a hot day.
> fairly a WAG .

> On 2/6/2014 1:32 PM, Neil N wrote:

>> http://www.ratwell.com/technical/FAQ/FAQContent.html#0142

--
Neil n

Blog: tubaneil.blogspot.ca

'88 Westy http://tinyurl.com/c8rlw6p

'81 VanaJetta 2.0 "Jaco"  http://tubaneil.googlepages.com/

Vanagon VAG *Gas* inline-VR Engine Swap Group:

http://tinyurl.com/d7gd5ej