cooling issue or bad guages (could use another opinion)

[doridoridori]

so I have a redtop SR rebuilt. got a pretty good radiator/fan shroud setup, coolant bled well and all of that. Here's the issue i've been having so I have a water temp gauge (prosport performance series) i've heard in the past quality wise they weren't great but not the worse either.

I let the car warm up and sit for 5-10 mins and it reaches 170-180F on the gauge. I have a nismo 160F termostat and everything is working as it should, also running distilled water and water wetter. Now after driving about 5-8 mins tops i see the temp gauge start to get close to 220F it's probably around 215-218F at most. I pulled over immediately and let the car cool down with the fan on the whole time.

Start it up after 15mins and get where im going. I have a cornwell infared thermo gauge so when the gauge in the car read it was that hot i checked with the thermo gun and the gun read 175F at the thermostat housing and around 165F on the upper hose. I have my temp sensor running in the upper hose. Recently just changed out the temp gauge and sensor for a new one a few weeks ago but could the gauge still be off?? if the gauge is wrong but it reads higher than what it is by default im going to shut the car off just to be on the safe side, anyone ever have issues like this with the same brand gauge ? and if so what gauges would you recommend ?

[unicoder]

When it starts to run hot, did you wait to see if it came back down on its own? Might have air in the system, bleeding can be annoying sometimes. Might just need to bleed it again.

Air/Steam reads a lot hotter than the water is on those gauges

[doridoridori]

When it starts to run hot, did you wait to see if it came back down on its own? Might have air in the system, bleeding can be annoying sometimes. Might just need to bleed it again.

Air/Steam reads a lot hotter than the water is on those gauges

that is very true but it's bled properly, and do you mean look at the gauge to see if the temps come back down?

[kyral]

I rarely have issues with air in the cooling system and I don't even bleed mine properly.

shoot the temp on the thermo housing when the gauge reads 160-170 and see what the temp gun says.
so if the gun reads 175 when the gauge says 220
then the gun should read lower than 175 when the gauge is at 175
if so id say your coolant temp gauge is working fine

thatll give you an idea of how accurate your temp gauge is

[doridoridori]

I rarely have issues with air in the cooling system and I don't even bleed mine properly.

shoot the temp on the thermo housing when the gauge reads 160-170 and see what the temp gun says.
so if the gun reads 175 when the gauge says 220
then the gun should read lower than 175 when the gauge is at 175
if so id say your coolant temp gauge is working fine

thatll give you an idea of how accurate your temp gauge is

I did that as well, if the gauge reads 160-170 the temp gun reads around 135-140. However I had ordered an AEM water temp gauge/sensor and installed it last night noticed a huge difference. on startup the gauge starts at 90F the lowest reading, i sat in the car 50mins total, within 20-25mins the temps read around 150-160F, once temps read 170F i turned the radiator fan on and when i did the temps went from 170F to around 163-164F. Turned the fan off it slowly crept past 170 but took a good while, turned the fan on again and temps dropped. With the old gauge when warmed up it would read 180-185F if i turned the fan on the needle never went down.