In the Good old days, radiator hoses would burst after 5 years, modern hoses last 20 years.
I prefer having a temperature gauge on a 10-year-old vehicle, someday it may be useful, but for someone buying a new car, why should they need a gauge?
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Well it worked on Volkswagens back in the 1950s. Of course they had a reserve and a petcock in the dash to switch to reserve.
I have never truly felt that I NEEDED a fuel gauge.
Electronics have no place in a fuel tank, whether it be an electric fuel pump or a sending unit. OR if your going to put electronics in a fuel tank, there needs to be an access hatch, which I know some foreign vehicles have.
Do you ever read what you post ? Plus even some domestic vehicles have an access plate for the fuel pump.
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Plenty do not have an access plate. The fuel gauge in my silverado does not work correctly. I believe it to be a faulty sender and i am not dropping the tank.
So I reset the trip odometer and fill it up every 225 miles. I never once felt that i missed the fuel gauge.
No, I’m saying the system was operating as designed. The temp gauge is not buffered like the fuel gauge. The temp gauge is not really a gauge. The blue/red light set-up tells you 3 things: it’s cold, it’s hot, it’s neither. The gauge works the same way. It’s not an unusual set-up. I can’t speak to every make out there, but every late model Ford product I see is that way.
I’m just sharing my real-life experience. Sounds like Nevada has the same experience. Temp gauges that don’t remain stable throughout the operating range of the engine are just a nuisance.
As a fellow Trailblazer owner I am quite familiar with their instrumentation. I also have a Chevy pickup whose charging gauge reads about 2 volts lower than actual system voltage. I have no plans to address that.
Surely this will fit the bill, but then some may complain about the inconvenience of having to open the hood…
So am I.
I guess some, but not all. I’ve had multiple gauges that have more than the “three” positions (cold/operating/too hot). In fact, I’ve never had a temp gauge that only works that way. E.g. a couple of years ago I figured out that my '02 Envoy (4.2L) had a coolant leak under pressure because the normally “rock solid” gauge at the midpoint started to “float.” It didn’t go cold or hot. But when the pressures got up it would leak off some pressure and temps would change and the gauge would respond.
Forever now, my '97 Ranger runs too cool. The gauge starts at rock bottom, and then only goes about 1/8 of the way up. In cold weather it takes forever to make heat and even then it’s only mediocre heat. I did the thermostat but I think the bypass in the outlet is probably burned. Never bothered to figure it out - it’s a beater work truck that I don’t even use that much, esp in the winter. If it ran on the hot side I’d worry. On the cold side, not worth the trouble.
And I know these gauges are buffered - they don’t even have numbers on them. But they absolutely do read more than just cold/up to temp/too hot.
No matter. My personal preference is more info on the dash rather than less. The FSMs generally do contain the info on temp range and what the gauge shows. For me it’s hard to find info. So I never tried.
Sorry that you have customers too dumb to handle it and that you apparently don’t have the patience to explain it to them. I’m not that customer.
Edited addendum: Since SAAB is dead there is free access to an online “Workshop Information System” (WIS). It’s short of info, but easy to access. I have a 2006 9-3 2.0T, and haven’t had cooling system issues, but here are the specs for temps and gauge readings. It’s more than just cold/at temp/too hot, and I prefer it:
Actually a head temp gauge is really what a car should be measuring all along as the first overheating damage will likely be there. But the coolant gauge was the proxy as it was easier to create the sensor to measure it. But either works to warn of overheating.
My VW GTI didn’t have a coolant gauge. Only an oil temp gauge. But same result. If an engine is overheating the oil temp would soar too.
Frankly for most drivers what is needed is for the fuel injectors to gradually (over say 20 seconds to avoid panic) shut off if any parameter is over the limit. A $200 tow is cheaper than a $5000 new engine.
But people are rather thick and think they can ignore the warnings.
Oh no, here we go again with the discussion years ago whether Gm has a second circuit for the oil pressure sensor. Cuts off the fuel pump if pressure is lost. Still don’t know or care who won the argument. Take what comes with the car. Adapt. Change cars, or there is always the bus.
Maybe get them to read the manual. Nah. They’d rather complain it was someone else’s fault.
I remember reading a few years ago about a car shop that used to try to explain to owners why their motors blew due to no oil. They would get very indignant and sometimes violent “NO IT MUST HAVE BEEN SOMETHING ELSE AT FAULT.”
So he now just changes the motor and charges them the 5 grand. And they just assume all cars do that and walk away happily dumb.
My brother and his son have both blown motors due to oil starvation. Their solution? Drive the car to the dealer. Say it stinks. Give me my money back. They say no. So they say find I’m not going to make any payments on it and walk out throwing the keys at the service manager. Then they complain they don’t know why their credit scores are low and can’t get another car. It’s always the SYSTEMS fault.
Ford has cylinder head temperature sensors
Most vehicles operate as shown in that Saab chart, doesn’t that car have a General Motors instrument cluster?
For the vehicles that I am familiar with, the temperature gauge rises slowly during warm-up and stays in the center during the normal operating temperature range. By disconnecting the radiator fan motor, the PCM engine temperature can be compared to the gauge; the needle will move to 3/4 on the scale at 235 to 240 F, then to hot at 250 F. The gauge shows the driver what they need to know.
It was made during the GM years, for sure. Plenty of the OEM parts are GM. As for the cluster, IDK.
Yeah, and it’s more than just a too cold/too hot light. I don’t understand the idea that I shouldn’t want more accurate info. Sure, maybe most drivers don’t care / can’t handle it? I can. I don’t just want an “idiot light” - that’s all I’m saying. And when I want to I can hook up a scanner to read what the ECM sees for temps and get a real number. Most of the time I don’t need to. But the gauge does “say” some things.
Unfortunately you are going down the same rabbit hole as the “I don’t want an automatic, or power windows , or A/C, or infotainment centers” crowd is… The OEM’s go with the money and if money says we don’t care or want said items, then said items are gone or very rare…
I get it, but I know in my fun car I am constantly looking at my temp and oil pressure gauges, the temp is constantly moving with air flow and the oil is constantly moving with RPM’s, it would drive most people crazy now a days if you had never seen it before, do you really think a Cady owner wants to see their oil pressure gauge jumping all over the place every time they stop or slow down and then take off again?? If they even looked at them, heck when was the last time you saw a voltage gauge on a new car??.. lol (if recent then I am having a brain fart)
Sure they could incorporate a digital instrument cluster that had both manual style gauges as well as buffered gauges or just idiot lights and the user, or salesman, or dealer or whoever would set it to what the end user wanted… But besides the added cost, it would be a PIA to do, I mean have you seen how many different ways GM alone has to just reset the oil change reminder over the years?? Or how to reset a TPMS light?? … 
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We could go back to The Good Old Days of mechanical fuel pumps and the “joys” of carburetors!
That would be just fine with me, although we are back to mechanical fuel pumps in alot of vehicles. Look at the high pressure pump on the 5.3 GM motor, its just an old fashioned mechanical fuel pump.
We take whiz bang technology such as direct injection and “regress” back to old technology while still keeping an electric pump in the tank so now we have unreliable old AND unreliable new technology for a confluence if whiz bang techno marvel engineering.
“You miss your long-lost Chevrolet Nova”
Not as much as my 68 cougar xr7!
You are REALLY out-of-touch, Rick
High pressure pumps for direct injection are very different than the old mechanical pumps for those ancient carbureted vehicles you’re lusting after
Technology has really progresses
My 2025 Camry is bigger, more powerful, has more safety features and options AND gets better fuel economy than my friend’s 2013 Prius
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