Temperature Gauge

Hi All!

I was wondering if anyone has noticed this: When the car is first turned on the temp gauge registers all the way cold (below the scale). After the car has been driven for a few minutes the gauge begins to move up and will finally settle just below half way up the scale. Then it DOES NOT MOVE!

I drive at a moderate speed: just below half. I drive the car very hard: just below half. The car sits and idles and the fans go on: just below half. I think you get the idea.

I have another Mazda (RX-7) and it did the very same thing. For that car it seems that Mazda thought that people like to see that the car is operating at a "normal" temperature and have skewed the gauge to read there. It turned out that the RX-7 gauge indicated that the car was warming up faster than it actually was and often that is was operating cooler than it was.

A very clever fellow RX-7 owner in San Diego figured out how to modify the factory gauge so that it acurately reflected what the car was actually doing. I don't know if the same mod will fix the MP3, but for now I'm curious to see if others have noticed this too.

i've noticed this to but this happens to all cars thats what the fans are for and fluids and if anything if you want go ahead and run your car completly dry and tell of us if the gauge moved up or not...

I don't think I will take you up on that offer -

All I'm saying is that the temp gauge we have in our cars is really nothing more than an idiot light with a needle. This is one of things that did disappoint me about this car - the lack of instrumentation. No oil pressure, no volt meter.

Even the temp gauge in my old Pontiac Grand Am was functional.

The gauge in my old honda did the same as the mp3. It sits at one spot once it is warmed-up. I feel this is normal but we need an expert.

On many factory cars the temp gauge is designed to simply reflect a broad range of acceptable temps...I believe in SCC, they found on one of their project cars that the temp needle stayed in the middle when then actual temp was fluctuating over a broad range. So this means your actual temp can be quite close to dangerous levels and you wouldn't even know because the needle would sustain its position.

A very clever fellow RX-7 owner in San Diego figured out how to modify the factory gauge so that it acurately reflected what the car was actually doing. I don't know if the same mod will fix the MP3 I would like to know how that was done...other choice is to get an aftermarket one.

I had a mitsubishi mirage, and its needle did the same thing as the mp3. It pretty much stayed in the middle. That is.. Until one day when the cap for flushing the antifreeze gave way and started leaking collant. The needle began to skyrocket towards the red.

I think it is just a broad range of OK temps. Which is good for most people.

Tim

Having the gauge read "normal" probably is good for most people, but I would have to guess that most MP3 owners are not most people. I like to know what's actually going on with my car!

Here's the link to the temp gauge info for the 3rd gen. RX-7:
http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Garage/8255/tempgauge.html

Here's the link to the temp gauge mod for the 3rd gen. RX-7 (it's a big acrobat file):
http://us.share.geocities.com/MotorCity/Garage/8255/Instructions.pdf

I just tried that second link - and I couldn't get it to work. So here's another one:
http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Garage/8255/technical.html

Go here and then click on #2. I found that it works better to right click on the hyperlink and choose "Save target as." Hope that works better!