temp light keeps comming on?

[beatle boy]

it seems that when it rains it pours, we have now noticed the last few days that the temp light( the red thermometer symbol below the temp gauge) seems to come on and beep when we first jump into the car, there's water in the bottle and the temp gauge doesn't go above half way or 90 as a matter of fact it takes ages to reach 90 and it sometimes just sits on the 3rd bar which we find strange because we thought it just sat on 90 all the time, has anyone else seen this before as we are thinking its either a thermostat issue a water pump issue or maybe even a switch/ sender issue that the computer is picking up ?

Cheers Kyle.

[JustCruisn]

You probably have a small leak, now that the winter cold is here the coolant shrinks enough to set off the low coolant alarm, then as things warm up the coolant expands above the min mark and the light goes out again.
If the gauge never gets to 90 you probably have thermostat which has stuck open, so max flow all day long never gets very hot.

Gauge should get to 90 in a few minutes of driving and stay there. It is weighted so it will not go past 90 until things get over 105 I believe.

You can spot coolant leaks by looking for a pinkish white powder where the leaked red coolant has dried.
Not sure which car you have but on the GTI there is a plastic junction on the end of the block, battery end which often cracks, or the seal on the temp sensor can leak also. And just about anywhere there is a join you could get a leak.

[beatle boy]

[QUOTE=JustCruisn;1130918]You probably have a small leak, now that the winter cold is here the coolant shrinks enough to set off the low coolant alarm, then as things warm up the coolant expands above the min mark and the light goes out again.
If the gauge never gets to 90 you probably have thermostat which has stuck open, so max flow all day long never gets very hot.

Gauge should get to 90 in a few minutes of driving and stay there. It is weighted so it will not go past 90 until things get over 105 I believe.

You can spot coolant leaks by looking for a pinkish white powder where the leaked red coolant has dried.
Not sure which car you have but on the GTI there is a plastic junction on the end of the block, battery end which often cracks, or the seal on the temp sensor can leak also. And just about anywhere there is a join you could get a leak.[/

Thanks again mate, we went out and bought a new 91DEG C thermostat today, I'm sure it cant be too hard to replace,I will flush the coolant as well and put some red NULON in it as that's what the guy at the spares shop said we should be using and I will look for leaks also, Im hoping it wont be anything too serious.

Cheers John. KYLES DAD!