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I'm currently working as a cooling/heat manage ment engineer associated with one of the oem here in MI. The actual coolant temp exiting the engine or what we called top water temperature is not always the same with what the gauge is showing you. We actually can program the gauge to show temps range. So when you see 180 reading, it can be a real 180c or more depending on how the oem program the gauge. Customers does not like to see temperature gauge to show more than half way, depending on the situation (cost and styling restrictions) some cars run a bit hotter but still within the safe zone. The coolant temps limit are actually pretty high, it will not boil up tp 123C with 14psi cap. We do not want to run the engine to that temp not because the engine cannot withstand those temps as we can calibrate the hardware to work with that 123C/253F but the engine oil temp will go to unacceptable limit. We prefer oil temp to be below 140c for non synthetic or 160c for synthetic. Once oil goes to that high temp, many things can happen including accelerated engine wear. The bigger sump normally leads to higher oil capacity and lower oil temp but higher cost for oem. Another way is oil cooler which is not a cheap option, we like it but the finace group does not.... removing anything in the vehicle is not a good idea since we always design the vehicle to work with minimum cost to build. We try to build a car with least amount of parts possible due to cost, weight and fuel economy.
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