I noticed on cold mornings (40-50s) the gauge does not go half way even driving 30 minutes, about a bit more than 1/3. In the afternoon or most of the time it points to about middle.

Is the gauge that sensitive or there is a problem with the thermostat? The thing is I don't feel the car is slow to warm up normally, I rarely heard of thermostat problems on a Toyota until a whole lot of miles. I wish I have one of those ODB2 logger now and maybe it reads the coolant temperature.

 

Mine always reads at the half mark even in negative digits. Do you have hot heat in really cold temps?

 

The gauge isn't a direct-read, it's the computer telling you what it thinks the temperature is. So if it's not reading normal (which is half-way) there's something to be investigated.

Thermostat, coolant age, fan clutch stuck "on", etc.

Chip H.

 

Yes i do have heat but i have not tried it all the way hot..Is the thermostat hard to get to on these cars?

 

So today it is not pointing to the middle again, it's a little off (I drove half an hour)
I let it idle a bit and didn't change either. So I turned off and restarted the ignition. It points at 3 o clock like I expected.

So there is something wrong with the gauge. My fuel gauge on the other side sometimes will read less than 1/4 tank and it will slowly try to go towards the correct trading but never does. Restarting the car gets the correct reading. Seems like there is something bad with the small stepper motor for the fuel and temp needle.

I am just glad I don't have to dig into the cooling system yet since I was one day going to send it to Tanin and get these gauge issues fixed

 

Extremely common gauge issue along with failed or dimming backlighting. See them all the time.