Just looking for an opinion or two here; I have a 99 Altima that's always seemed to take a long time to warm up, particularly in the winter. It's an unusually cold night here (2-3 deg C) and I just went for a 40 minute drive. Mostly 60km/h and up, and not much stop & go. When I shut the car off, the lower rad hose (between the thermostat and the rad) was not by any means hot, lukewarm at best, while the upper hose was quite warm, but not scorchingly so.
The temp gauge was up to the normal range, and the car had been running a few hours previous to when I started, so shouldn't the thermostat be fully open and the coolant nice and warm? Or is the rad just doing a very good job of cooling the coolant in this weather?