03GTI Claiming it's overheating but not showing any signs???

for the past few days my temp gauge has been making me think my car is about to overheat and then it goes back to normal.
i checked my coolant level, it is fine, added more and checked it the next day, it was the same. there is no excessive heat coming from the engine when i pop the hood and it is running fine leading me to believe that it is not actually overheating. the fans only cam on yesterday, the gauge was in the red, i pulled over and popped the hood and like before there didn't seem to be any signs of it overheating..
last night, same thing. pulled over about three times and finally i just said screw it and drove it in the red for probably at least 5 miles going the normal speed limit, still never showed any signs of overheating. it cranked up fine this morning and drove fine to work. WHAT IS GOING ON???

Is it the thermostat?? or the actual gauge? or is it just some computer error??? or what? i would like to figure this out becuase i need to know when my car actually is overheating.

PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!!!
THANKS

you could have two problems The t-stat being one they sometimes cock over when opening causeing the flow to be reduced.

the other is the water pump impeller. they are made of plastic composite.

some will crack and work fine till the car heats up then it stops spinning do to the crack others have been broke for some time just have not broke completly off the shaft.

If you do the T-stat you can look into the opening and get a look at the water pump impeller and can fell if it spins on the shaft.

good luck keep us up dated.

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http://www.vortexautomotive.com

ok so i replaced the tstat, not the problem, replaced the temp sensor but my Malfunction indicator lamp didn't go off and it continued to do the same thing so i took it to the import shop. they can the code and said it was the temp sensor so they reset the code, if it doesn't come up again then im good there. but now they are telling me my driver side fan motor is bad and its going to be $400 to fix it.. BULLSH*T. they say that's what was causing my cooling issue but to my knowledge both were coming on just fine. news to me. he said that they are both supposed to run when the A/C comes on and pretty much both of them are supposed to run all the time.

does that sound right? and will this fix my problem or is this just a load of crap??

sounds right enough to me. when is the car due its next big service??
as in water pump and timing belt service.

not sure what you mean. i can't afford to do the inspections. my warranty is up.

there is different types of services due at different mileage marks. oil, plugs etc every couple of thousand miles.
bigger services, depending on the car say every 50,000 miles where the water pump is changed and the the timing belt is done.
how many miles are on the car??

about 50,000.
i have the oil changed regularly, it's probably a little past due this time but it's been sitting and i don't want to drive to get it changed until i solve this problem first. i probably do need some new spark plugs but that's something i can do myself. i changed out my thermostat and my temp sensor and also replaced my dipstick funnel(which was broken into a bunch of pieces somehow) so im not completely incompetent.
there is no way im paying someone $80 an hour for two hours to replace a fan. it looks fairly easy to get to and fairly easy to replace so i think im gonna do that myself too. but i wanna know if that's actually what is causing my problem. because the fans seemed to be working fine. he said that the fans should run pretty much all the time, is this correct??

is fan should be running almost all the time. what i'm getting at about the water pump and timing belt service is that if the water pump is worn it might not be circulating the water properly and so the thermo stat for the fan might not be getting a true reading and therefore the fan wouldnt be running often enough to keep the engine cold. if the timing belt and water pump service was done it might solve your problem.

yeah i figured all that was left was the waterpump..
had the waterpump and timing belt replaced, that was the problem
it's running now.
i do feel like these guys got me on the whole fan thing, but what ever i should known better and just replaced the waterpump myself.

oh well im trading it in anyways..

glad you got the problem solved Smile

hope your replacing it with another vw!!

This is happening on my 2003 GTI 1.8 T , too. When I idle the temp gauge shows I'm right at the proper temp where I've always been. Then this started suddenly happening: if I drive over 30 or so, the temp slowly creeps up and eventually into the red zone. When I coast or sit at a stop light, it goes back down. Weird, as it seems when engines normally overheat, they also overheat (even more so) when the vehicle is NOT in motion. Any advice? My local VW dealer wants to charge me $95 per hour just to look at it, then who knows how much more.
Also, does anyone know the answer to this: My VW has 51,600 miles and its 5 year anniversary is mid July. My POwertrain Warranty is good for 5 years or 60k miles. If it's a water pump issue, will it be covered?