Stalling. Mine has done this from time to time, not seriously but it happens. I
am going to try and clean out the idle control valve. Its right above the valve
cover. Many VW's with this valve develop stalling problems as they get older
because this valve gets gunked up. Take off the valve and spray the inside with
brake-clean (or equiv). Let it dry and then put it back.

High temp gage. The way you describe it you may not have any problems with the
cooling system. One thing VW has done for years is to run the coolant gage off
of a 10 volt regulator. This is the part that on EV's make the gages act weird
because of a bad solder joint. Anyway, This does work to keep the gage accurate,
but running big electrical consumers may overwhelm this set-up. You can test
this by repeating start up with and with-out the AC on. On a Golf I had with
high power lights and fogs lights would run much higher temps on the gage at
night because the lights power drain would have this same effect.

There is an EV around here that same color. I will follow it around and see if I
get a chance at the bumpers. No, only fooling.

Pawling NY

Cars I have: 93 Eurovan MV
                  75 Westy
                  73 Super

Cars I had: 89 GTi 16v
                 87 Syncro
                 83 Rabbit GTi
                 82 Vanagon Diesel (w 83 GTi engine)