Yeah I like the switching with a 144. Sounds crazy enough for me to have a reason to go and buy another car.

Ron probably hit the problem by separating the two issues.

I had a similar problem with the heater gauge. Only the normal reading was just kissing the red zone. At cruise conditions it started the roller coaster of going high then low then high and yes that was due to a faulty thermostat. Got a new one and that fixed the roller coaster.

When I bought the car at 56000 miles I found that the temp gauge was reading on the high end of normal verging on red. I had the system flushed and determined that the gauge must be off. Around 200,000 miles it was time to get the engine rebuilt. When I got the car put back together I found that the temp needle was now sitting smack dab in the middle of the normal zone. Guess what? for close to 10 years I was running that engine HOT. Ends up that the arteries were clogged, I asked the mechanic and he said that most of the passages were about 1/2 clogged. Taking it in every 2 years for professional flushing amounted to wasted $$. Moral of the story - check to make sure your temp gauge is gauged correctly.

patrick