Engine Temp and Speedo Check

My 500 is running midway on the temp guage when on the go, but creeps way up in traffic when there are lots of stops. Fan is working. A few times it has raised to just shy of the red bar on the right. I seem to remember my first VF500 being about the same 25 years ago. Do others experience that much heat in traffic on hot days? Is a mid gauge reading for open road riding the norm on a hot day?

I had to buy a new speedometer cable and traffic seems fast relative to what my speedo reads. Can someone confirm that at around 7k in 6th they are going approximately 80mph?

 

Hi,

For the temp, nothing unusual, and the bike is known from being hot in town. Reaching the red is possible in town, happened to me a couple of times.

As far as I remember, for the speedometer, seems slightly high on the rpms for 80mph (maybe .1 or .2k) so nothing to worry in my opinion.
I usually don't drive that fast as it would request me to go on the highway with it, impossible when I can use the mountain roads ^^

 

I flushed the rad and I seem to still be running too hot in traffic. As noted above, my gauge creeps all the way up. I have purchased a small toggle switch that I am going to install on the lines to manually turn on the fan earlier. I will be doing that sometime in the next week.\

In the meantime, I had the plugs pulled and was wondering if I might be running a little lean. What do you think?

 

Maybe slightly little lean on the left one (white), the others looks good (nice brick redish color)
And in traffic, the bike will run hot, it is not meant to be too much in traffic.
With me, 1mn idling at the red light and the fan starts, temperature goes up real quick on our oldies.

For the fan if I remember correctly, there exists an alternate temp sensor we can use instead of the genuine one, which will turn on the fans at lower temp.
But the toggle switch will work just as fine ^^