My Honda Odyssey ran with the needle 1/3 of the way up its gauge all the time. This just seems to be a manufacturer thing. It weirded me out after having several Chevy Ventures where the needle sat in the middle.
1 - 11 of 11 Posts
Welcome to MetrisForum
That's normal, and it is across the range of MB vehicles. I had the exact same notion years ago with our SUV. MB decided to extend the operating range on their vehicles beyond vertical, with white ticks going to 12 o clock and a few red ticks to 2 o' clock, and the red ones are hard to see (sunlight, sunglasses, ...) ... but considering all the ticks, one or two above horizontal is half way on the range.
Dash displays of coolant temperature at least analog displays are at best just an indication of temperature. My experience with a number of cars since 1996 (when OBD2 appeared) monitoring coolant temperature via an OBD2 scan tool connected the car's OBD2 port is the gauge is at best a sort of kind of way to know if the engine is cold, warm or hot (up to temperature hot). In the event of a real overheating condition there'll be a warning light or a warning message or both.
For cars coolant temperature has been in the range of 190F to 226F. 190F at highway speed on a cold day. 226F was at highway speed on a very hot day (ambient temperature 116F).
I have data logged my Metris some and once up to operating temperature the temperate does up to around 210/212F then the fan comes on and the temperature drops. Unfortunately this data is on another computer and is hard to render into something I can post.
But I am looking a coolant temperature graph and the temperature describes a saw tooth wave form. In one case starting at around 92F rising to a high of 209F in about 6 minutes of driving on surface streets before I hit the freeway. Then the temperature dropped to 183F in around 15 seconds (!). In about 45 seconds later it was up to 205F. Then it dropped again to 178F in about 30 seconds. And pretty much repeated this over the trip which lasted very close to 2 hours. This was I think the first leg of my drive from CA back to AR on April 24, 2021. I looked at the other data logged on stretches as I made my way east and the coolant behavior was pretty much the same. Probably had the A/C on too as late April can be pretty warm in the Central Valley where I started from.
Not the best way to show this but I'll post a pic of the graph taken of my Thinkpad's screen using my iPhone:
Trip started at 12:08:41pm and ended at 2:08:50pm. And pretty much the van's speed was in the 78mph range the entire time that saw tooth like section represents.
thanks
1 - 11 of 11 Posts
