Where is red (in celcius)?

[ElmrPhD]

Hi All,
Suppose someone were to put a more modern (Peugeot) turbo diesel into a Series III (24V ex-Dutch-military)...like I did.
I kept the original temperature sender and its mated gauge.
The gauge reads that it runs hot. I firmly believe this is accurate enough because the Peugeot engine is intended to run hot...ter.
The Pug's thermostat is an "88" meaning that it starts to open at 83 and closes around 93, I think, whereas the original Landy thermostat was much lower (76?) I believe.
DOES ANYBODY have a clue what the red region means in terms of degrees C???
"N" corresponds to 76 C?
It amazes me that this information is not Google-able. Not for me anyway.
Actually, I would like to know where 88 C would be (+/-) on the Series temp gauge, so that I can have an idea as to whether my Pug motor is running hot or not.
The military gauge also has an oil temperature gauge. Same deal, but I can't imagine anybody can tell me what the "N" and the red correspond to on the oil temperature gauge. I'm guessing that the Pug's turbocharger heats the oil well beyond what the original 2,25 motor would do. So, no big surprise there either.
Anyone???
Cheers,
Steve, in the NLs

[Les Parker]

Just a suggestion, how about using an infa-red thermometer and taking the doubt out of the guage reading? Also, I would be inclined to fit a capillary water temp guage with either fahenheit or celcius marking (market familiarity).

2p

[disco2hse]

Don't know what the red temp is, but I can say that 83ºC should be around one third up the scale. Since the system is pressurised, it can achieve greater than 100ºC without boiling and at that point, it should already be close to or in the red zone. Having said that, I have often seen the Aussies refer to temperatures around 95º-120º without issues, but it gets really hot in them parts.

There are factors that affect the readout on the gauge. They may be the age/effectiveness of the sender, the resistance in the wire, the health of the voltage stabiliser, and so on. It is not and was never intended to be an accurate form of measuring the temperature of the coolant or oil but that the engine is running within its designed limits, or to alert the driver of impending doom.

If you really want to know specific temperatures, then Les has offered a solution. One could get a little,... you know,... OCD about it.

Personally, I prefer to let my other senses alert me to potential problems: nose, ears, sense of touch.

[SafeAirOne]

Disconnect the sender and substitute a 90-ohm resistor (connected to the sender wire on one end and grounded on the other). Look at the gauge. That's roughly where 180F (83C) is on the gauge, presuing it's a standard SIII gauge that operates on 10v.

Alternatively, you could substitute a variable resistor (0-300 ohms) and crank it till you hit the red line on the gauge and see what themerature that ohm reading corresponds to: http://siteground237.com/~gunsandr/showthread.php?1871-Temp-Sender-Ohm-Values-vs-Coolant-Temperature

I don't know if they make a lower-teperature thermostat, but if they do, I wouldn't use it. 180F is about as low as you should go.