winchester - 235's are hard to warm up - 283's run best hot, 190 is better than below 180 - the shroud is critical to keep the temp around 180, and will make a difference .... the original v8 setups had a shroud if the fan was more than 1/2" from the rad
Pat - on my 58 w/ 283, the gauge starts "buried" like yours, I don't think that's a problem - when the key's turned on it does jump up a bit, after a few minutes it starts moving up, and at full normal temp it's a twitch below halfway, say 3/8 - my 57 w/ 235 is about at the dot off, jumps a bit when the key's turned on, and when fully warmed up it's up to about 1/8th ... once when I popped a leak and lost a lot of the water, the temp gauge went way up quite quickly, so I know it works - you might fix the situation with a different gauge
Bill
