I know the original gauge is not to be relied upon. I would be happy to pay someone to make the factory gauge more accurate and reliable. Does anyone do this?

 

The gage doesn't directly measure temperature, so can't calibrate to temperature by itself. It's really the whole system of temp sender, gage, and wiring.

​​​​​​It's just the wrong tool if you're interested in knowing 5° change. It's fine if you're keeping track of normal, low, and high. You could pop the needle off and reposition so it's more reprensentive at operating temp. Or maybe play with the wire resistance.

I have aftermarket EFI so I just pull it up on a channel on the laptop if I'm interested in details. The details really don't matter to me though and just knowing it's in normal range is good enough for me. Anybody that has overheated (Including me) can tell you it's quite obvious on the gage when it happens.

 

Which is exactly why most new cars only have idiot lights. Prevents unnecessary customer concern over normal fluctuations that they don't understand. We deal with this ALL the time when we sell people tuner boxes for late model cars. We call them Anxiety boxes. Without fail they call/email/phone us about numbers they saw that concern them - usually related to knock feedback or air fuel ratio. It's really better to give consumers less information in many situations.

GD

 

LOL. good stuff, thanks. I may get a setup and play with voltage and resistors, etc.