Passat temperature light flashing

I just replaced my fan motor, one speed was burned out. I replaced my water pump, too. It was locked up. Now both are working fine, but when I start the car, the temperature light flashes, and the temperature guage reads about 200 degrees F. This is impossible, since the car had not been running, previously. Anyway, the temperature guage is stuck at 200 degrees F. I am guessing it needs a new temperature sensor. The problem is that I can't find it. My dad has a shop where they work on mostly trucks. They do have a Mitchell CDROM system though, and I looked up the sensor's location using this software. It indicated that it should be under the distributor, but I can't find it for the life of me. It also indicates that it should be a YELLOW/RED single wire. I can't find anything of the sort. I find three sensors/switches that look like one of them may be it, but they are all 2-4 wires, and none of them have the proper YELLOW/RED coloring scheme that the Mitchell manual dictates it should have.

I just bought this car, recently, and am early in the learning curve.

The sunroof also leaks very badly, and I haven't yet had a chance to see what is causing that. It doesn't look like when it closes that it closes level.

Can anyone tell me where the engine coolant sensor is?

Anyone had any experience with a leaking sunroof?

This is a 1993 VR6 with standard transmission.

It turns out that it was not the temperature sensor. The Mitchell diagrams (apparently like many other diagrams) for the Passat are incorrect, anyway. If you want diagrams, the Jetta diagram seemed to be accurate for my Passat VR6. Anyway, the temperature sensor was working, the instrument cluster was malfunctioning. The previous owner either lied, or didn't know what he was talking about. He told me he had figured out that the speedometer wasn't working because the sensor was bad, but this was related to the instrument cluster, as well.

I bought a used instrument cluster, put it in, and the temperature guage at least registers, now. It doesn't read accurately. The cluster also has a digital readout if you cycle through using the button on the stalk of the right of the steering column, I believe it is. Anyway, when the digital temperature reads 214F (pretty steady max temperature) the guage reads just over 160F.

Needless to say, the guages on this particular model of vehicle appear to be crap. But, at least this second one doesn't read 200F whether the car is in storage for a week, or sitting in 105F Texas traffic.

Good luck to anyone with this problem, and thanks to anyone that has any advice.

I'm now getting started on the leaking sunroof problem. I've seen that this is also fairly common. Anyone have any advice?

The flashing temperature light turned out to be only a low water/coolant level. There is not much room between that max level and the min level on the reservoir, and it was low. Put a little in and that went away, luckily.

My front door handles are also peeling. Anyone know where to get some other than the dealer? Maybe just get them reupholstered, professionally?

Heater core is disconnected. From my research, they had lots of problems with heater cores? (VW) Some recalls, maybe? Supposedly, VW says that this one was fixed via recall, so it must have broken even after the recall fix.

Off to fix the sunroof. Hope this info may help someone else.


I just replaced my fan motor, one speed was burned out. I replaced my water pump, too. It was locked up. Now both are working fine, but when I start the car, the temperature light flashes, and the temperature guage reads about 200 degrees F. This is impossible, since the car had not been running, previously. Anyway, the temperature guage is stuck at 200 degrees F. I am guessing it needs a new temperature sensor. The problem is that I can't find it. My dad has a shop where they work on mostly trucks. They do have a Mitchell CDROM system though, and I looked up the sensor's location using this software. It indicated that it should be under the distributor, but I can't find it for the life of me. It also indicates that it should be a YELLOW/RED single wire. I can't find anything of the sort. I find three sensors/switches that look like one of them may be it, but they are all 2-4 wires, and none of them have the proper YELLOW/RED coloring scheme that the Mitchell manual dictates it should have.

I just bought this car, recently, and am early in the learning curve.

The sunroof also leaks very badly, and I haven't yet had a chance to see what is causing that. It doesn't look like when it closes that it closes level.

Can anyone tell me where the engine coolant sensor is?

Anyone had any experience with a leaking sunroof?

This is a 1993 VR6 with standard transmission.