Update and Success!!! Thanks To All Who Helped!!!
Hi folks, just wanted to follow up with the way this thing that I (and we) were working on. I got my Greddy 38mm coolant sensor adaptor, the Greddy 52mm coolant sensor gauge, and a Greddy gauge mount today. Everything is installed and everything is working wonderfully well together. Some info some might want to know:
1. The Greddy coolant sensor adaptor is approx 28 dollars. It is the object from a photo above that is inserted into the upper radiator hose and provides a "tap" for a coolant temp sensor. In my case this was the only way to get an accurate coolant temperature gauge since the extra factory location on my rig is taken up with the coolant return line coming from the turbo. Anyway this adaptor thing is billet aluminum, it is no more than three inches long, takes no more than one half inch of extra room ( in other words the part that the sensor threads through is only about one half inch the rest of that 2.5 inches is what is inserted at each end into the upper radiator hose), see photo above.
2. The 52mm Greddy temperature gauge was 122 dollars. A special apology to Beowulf for mistakenly stating that the gauge was 55 dollars; I was asking the tech at the store about autometer as well as several others and I guess I got the price wrong. The gauge is a very nice self contained, self grounding gauge with black face and green backlight.
3. The Greddy guage holder was 12 dollars and is adjustable. In my opinion it is not as nice as a pod but with my dual pod holder on the driver's pillar, things were getting too tight to work with. I thought about getting a right hand pillar pod but then after listening to several sources convinced myself out of that as it would be hard to really see the small temperature variations from the driver's seat. I knew I would not want the gauges on the dash as that draws so much attention and I knew I would not want the guages on the center console as my GPS, cell, wallet, whatever is typically there, so, I installed it on the top of the steering column so that the only thing it blocks is the line of sight to the 2nd and 1st gear selector indicators.
4. Install is about as easy as easy gets - let loose some coolant so that the coolant is just below the upper radiator neck, remove the upper radiator hose, cut it in the middle where it is straight, insert the Greddy adaptor and install the Greddy supplied lined hose clamps, thread in the sensor, reconnect the upper radiator hose and adaptor assembly, connect one sensor wire to battery, connect other sensor wire to headlight fuse, route the other sensor wires to the gauge, pick a place to mount the qauge holder, mount it, install gauge and top off cooling system. All together the install took 1.5 hours.
Some first observations: I changed the coolant almost exactly one year ago and as my threads on the subject then admitted, I simply drained the rad three times then filled each time with distilled water and then drained one last time adding two gallons of coolant and distilled water till topped off. I had no visible sludge but as several here have stated, without draining the block and thoroughly flushing the system, I would not necessarily know??? Anyway, the coolant is changed yearly on my vehicles but instead of changing it and then doing the adaptor and gauge and whatsnot, I decided to do a before and after observation. So, this guage and this adaptor were installed with one year old coolant on purpose. ( The fact that I only drained and filled last year was not agghhemm on purpose!). The other thing worth mentioning is that my coolant to water ratio is off as evidenced by the -48 degree testout using my ethylene glycol floating arrow tester thingy. So since I have too much coolant, that would result in slightly lower cooling capacity as campared to a 50/50 ratio or perhaps even a 40/60 which should protect me in my temperatures for sure. Anyhoooooo...
I will record temps now and later with several hopefully helpful data points. To start, I drove a fast and furious drive through Denver and down the highway until I got stuck in some serious traffic so after all that the highest temp that was ever generated was 90 degrees Celsius which is 194 farenheit. Surprisingly to me was that the 90 degrees was not while I was flooring it up some serious slopes out of Denver, but when I was stuck in traffic. The average temp was between 86 and 88 degrees (186 to 190) and this average applied whether the heater was on or off. Also surprisingly to me is how utterly useless the stock gauge must be; from the time the real gauge read 65 all the way up to 90 the frickin factory gauge did not move one bit, not one bit at all. This is super surprising considering the "flat spot" of the factory gauge, at least if i recall correctly, was supposed to be from like 195 to 225 farenheit ... seems like that flat spot is measured with a voltmeter so I'm sure its accurate from a voltage perspective but all I can say is from the eyeball, it looks like the flat spot is much much larger??? I'm sorta confused about that.
I intend to record at least three other temps: The first with pure distilled water in the entire cooling system AFTER I thoroughly flush per E's method ( heater cores separately, then heater cores with block, then rad separately ). The second with a 50/50 mix of Toyota Red and distilled water. The third with a 40/60 mixture of coolant/water and a bottle of RedLine Water Wetter. I think from now on I'm going to go with the 40/60 and the water wetter so since this is the final goal, I want to get there but also have a comparison with 50/50.
Lastly, and sorry to ramble so much, a sincere thanks and salute to Mot who turned me on to this Greddy equipment. This has been hugely helpful to me and I would think that it would help whoever wants an accurate coolant temp gauge but does not want to or is not able to thread and tap that aluminum neck that goes to the upper rad hose. Thanks Mot, and thanks to the rest of ya fine fawkers, I mean fine folks, who helped and/or actually read this whole thing!!!
