Do any of you miss the temperature gauge? My son's Civic had one, and it came in handy. Sometimes, the cooling fan would not turn on, and he'd see the needle rising toward the red. I eventually installed a switch so he could turn it on manually. I always liked seeing engine temp.

My Garmin Nuvi has a separate unit that plugs into the car's OBD II, so I can see the coolant temp and anything else using the GPS. Coming back from Cape Cod, I had the A/C on, and I got stuck in traffic for about 20 minutes. The temp rose from 183 to 188. No big deal. Just out of curiosity, I turned off the A/C and turned on the heat. The temp went down to 179 - fast.

 

You're getting it very similarly to how I'm getting it. I bought one of the ODB II dongles online and went with one of the smartphone apps that show a ton of data including coolant temperature. That's really handy to have your GPS displaying it rather than the smartphone.

 

The lack of gauges is only slightly more useless than normal gauges. But I hated tying up my phone for instrumentation so I got an UltraGauge. Good stuff. The install can be a suction cup on the windshield or as clean as you want- and it can display anything the car can measure.

 

If the car is overheating you will get a red temp signal on the dash. for me not having a temp gauge is no biggie.

 

I like having a gas gauge to tell me where the tank is before the empty light comes on.

I also like seeing what the temp is doing before the overheating light comes on.

 

yes, i do. my previous daily driver was a 12' kia rio, which did not have a temp guage either. i got used to not having it, so now with the fit i am not that flustered anymore.

the german cars stopping installing oil dipsticks, so this is the wave of the future...