Another temperature Issue

[70spider]

Ok, drove the car today and notice the temp gauge not reaching it usual position, between the 1 and 9 on 190F, so about 185F. It was lower, settleing in around 140F. It stayed like this the whole drive and when I got home I decided to see if my fan would cycle on so I let it idle for awhile, and after about 5 minutes the fan cycled on. I checked the temp gauge it was at the normal postion, 185F. Could it be a bad thermostat? I installed a 185 fail-safe a month ago, so is this characteristic of a thermostat stuck in the open position? Or is it my gauge? Also I just put in a new overheat sensor a month ago. Could a bad temp sensor cause this? Besides the perplexing readings the car ran like a champ all day, about 100 miles . The damn thing is too fun not to drive .

[vandor]

Sounds like a stuck open t-stat, mind you when it happened to me the temp would be ~130, just a bit above the 120F mark.
But if the fan came on at 185, then your gauge is working correctly.

[70spider]

As suspected it was the thermostat stuck open. It was a new fail-safe model and as it happens has a problem of failing even when the car doesn't overheat. Mine lasted 7 weeks, reviews reported them failing repeatedly in a short time frame. However, despite not working for very long it did do what it advertised, fail in the open position. This prevented the car from overheating .