My temperature gauge stopped working this afternoon.  Been putting off
changing my motor over to a new to me one and I have been having heating
issues lately.  Slight leak in my head gasket, I think...In line four VW gas
motor, BTW.  For 3 yrs I have owned the van, that blinking coolant light has
never worked properly, so I really depend on my temperature gauge.  Have a
bike race in the morning, everything all loaded into my van for that...So
anyhow, I come home with no temp needle showing at all...get out my Bentley
and it tells me to ground one of the wires from the temp sender and if the
gauge needle goes to full hot, I have a bum sender or a wire problem..most
likely sender.  Do that..it is the sender.
   So I look around in my spare pile and find one that is a Temp II
sender...but I recall someone saying...they are identical..the coolant
temperature sender and the Temp II...So I decide to stick it in there and
see...I get it all ready, knowing I need to be quick with the swap to save
my antifreeze from running out....Pull the clip, get the one in hand to
stick in and pop out the other one....And Pop is what it did...followed by a
big shower of hot-ish antifreeze...all over me and all my bike clothes in a
bag and the Bentley book and my tools and and and....Dang, that was rude!
  But now I have a functioning temperature gauge again...I think.  I topped
the coolant and bled it and let it idle till the fan came on...the gauge
reads about right...so off I go to my bike race tomorrow at 6am, up near Mt
Adams in the Pac NW...Wish me luck...with the temp gauge.  The race?  No
expectations on that, we'll just see.

  Don Hanson