lucky you! when I got mine for my business ages ago it was about $200 .... so maybe you just need to take the gauge info as all it really was meant for, an indicator of normal, deviation from that tells you something's gone wrong and it's overheating .... you might have a bad gauge or the wrong sender and you might get a better read by changing one or both, but still the gauge wasn't originally a precision instrument, sudden changes from 'normal' is what counts
Bill