Project VIPER GTS: Part 11 – Understanding the Factory Temp Gauge

The Viper has an active water temperature gauge that is far more useful than the dummy gauges in most modern cars that only move when there is a massive problem. However, this tends to freak people out since it can be quite active and moves with the normal fluctuations in temperature a car sees. Like clockwork, once summer rolls around, Viper owners quite frequently post photos of their gauge asking if the needle position is normal. We are going to cover all of the bases from what is normal to what to be concerned over on a Gen 2 Viper.

In Part 5, we upgraded to the 1999-2002 radiator fan and ran a standalone relay and wiring harness to prevent a frequent issue of melting the factory relay box down due to insufficient wire size.  It is an important read that aligns with this article.

This is meant to be a quick reference for owners to better understand their car and its active thermostat.  All too often are photos taken asking if this is normal:

The common concern when the Viper’s temperature gauge is anything off center does somewhat justify the reason most cars have ‘dummy’ gauges that don’t move.  However, the Viper’s arbitrary (until you know what they mean) hash marks are nowhere near as informative as digital gauges displaying numerical values.

Consulting the Service Manual (which every Viper owner should have), we see that this is within the normal 30-40 degrees of gauge travel.

Looking further in the Manual, we see that the needle position in question is a “Normal Maximum Up To 70*F Ambient”. In most cases, people who are concerned about the temps of their engine, aren’t driving in sub-70*F weather. Because of this we need to look at the right of this gauge where it says “Maximum Normal -Hot Weather With Heavy Load”. This is right before the red mark on the gauge, so according to the manual, anything to the left of the red mark is considered ‘normal’ if the weather is hot (above 70*F) and/or the car is driven hard with heavy load.

Figure 6 shows the normal gauge reaction due to stopping after heavy use, explaining that the hot water and lack of air flow will cause the needle to go to the ¾ mark.