Quick Question about Water Temp, Please Help
 

I read a lot about overheating, I wonder when you guys talking about water temp where did you got the reading from? stock sensor? front radiator hose from after market sensor? The reason I asked is, because I read some posts that the stock sensor reading is usually higher than the reading from the front radiator hose.

So if you guys are talking about 200F is safe from the stock sensor, when I am looking at my gauge at 200F as well but my reading is from the front radiator hose sensor, that means my temp is actually around 210F.

Hope I make sense to you....

Thanks in advance

We don't have "front" radiator hoses. They're all in the "front".

We have upper and lower hoses.

My sensor is in the upper radiator hose...

What year is the car? what year is the gauge cluster?

Buy an after market gauge and see for yourself what the margin of error is. They are cheap, easy, and comes with peace of mind. You don't have to mount it in the car or even keep it for any length of time. Just throw it in there, see what it says after a few days of driving under different conditions and see what come out.

Where are you located?

Sig. Other info...

sensor located at/near where upper hose connects to engine

my upper hose is a "rear" hose, so my sensor is located at the "rear" hose connection plate.

That's a fairly safe place to put it. It'll be slightly hotter closer to the engine, some of that may be due to heat soak though. I've got mine in the lower radiator hose, which is considered "bad" since it's after the radiator has cooled the water.

The stock gauge doesn't read high or low, it just tells you whether you're in a safe zone. There's a good pic of this somewhere around hear, search "linearized stock gauge".

There's essentially a dead zone from 160-220 IIRC.

This is my setup. I am using 55mm Koyo. water & water wetter. My temp is always sitting between 195-205.
I have do have plans to do some ducting to make sure all the air go through the radiator.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1342222828

May be let me rephrase my question a little bit.

For those people who has water temp less than 200F, where do you install your water temp sensor?

My aftermarket gauge is in the upper hose and usually reads 10-15* cooler (typically 190-195*) than what my ECU sees, which reads off the neck at the back of the head and usually shows up in datalogs at 200-206*.

Thank you so much, that's exactly what I wanted to know.

Now I need to find ways to make water temp steady at 190F......

I should note that this is what I see at cruise or when the car is getting a mild beating. I've never datalogged much at full flog, and it's not a track car.

i would do some data log as the cluster gauge may be slightly off. more then 210 is going out of the comfort zone though...