Well, bless your heart Thomas for posting this.   And of course thanks to Dennis for the info. After 315K miles the temp was reading low and was intermittent.  Replaced thermostat, radiator, the usual suspects, made measurements.  Engine seemed to run fine but a cooling problem can fry an engine quickly so it’s best to have it all operate correctly. Nothing made sense…until replacing the temp sensor……which then started reading close to the top white line.  Grumble, grumble.  Last week measured about ten things with temp gun and digitool during warmup and concluded temp was ok.  Am planning to temporarily “swap” temp sensors, t1 and t2, using jumpers since the resistive element is supposed the be the same, and will probably find they aren’t the same cold or at operating temp. A years long saga may be coming to an end.  May put a resistor in series to get needle back just under the LED. Super thanks.

I posted a somewhat related item a while ago that adding a water pressure gauge has been a very effective engine monitoring, disaster avoiding, and troubleshooting tool. Tapped off the heater hose junction near the bottom of the radiator with a flushing T.  A $100 pressure checker has helped to find some of the 40 leaks over 34 years.

JODTAA, (Just One Darn….)    Tom

From:    Thomas Casal 
> If you had your coolant temp gauge sensor replaced that may be the reason for the high reading. The new sensors aren=E2=80=99t calibrated right so they run high even though the vanagon is running at normal temperature. Per Dennis I sourced the part luckily from VW….