thermostat

Hi people, i havent been on in a few weeks as my phone has died so not got easy access! I fitted a tgermostst on my car last weekend and it works fine, there wasnt a thermostat in there at all and never has been so it seems like the ultimate upgrade lol! Its opening temp is 87° and im constantly driving on edge cos of how high the temp gauge is riding at….i looked on vwheritage and they sell one at 71° opening temp, im going to get one for sure just to rest my mind lol, what are other peoples experience of this?

How high is the gauge going?
I've always used the standard thermostate and normal driving sits at half way and if in traffic it goes to 3/4 then the fan kicks in and within a minute it's back at 1/2. This is the same even if it's in the middle of the summer on a hot day.

Yea its sits at half when driving but i drove all the wag to the next town(15 miles) to my brothers and it was in tge middle, then we stood there for 15 mins before the bottom pipe started to get warm whuch would indicate the  thermostat has opened! This just seems abit daft to me that i could go on a journey and another 15 mins sat without it opening, makes me weary and constantly got my eye on the temp gauge lol

When the weather is colder like it is now the thermostat can keep close if you are moving as the moving air is cooling the engine, I had a thermostat stuck open before and on my 45 minute drive to work every day my temp gauge was only on 1/4 and the oil temputure would only reach 70 (water feed oil cooler) The oil temputure would go up to 80 if I stopped in traffic, This happened for a couple of weeks till I got around to changing the thermostat so I guess the thermostat does close when the car is in use. 

1/2 is exactly where it should be, and your stat is behaving exactly as it should. so stop worrying