Can You Help A Girl Out?

Run the car up to temp and stick a thermometer ( one that will go to 180/220) in the rad and see what your actually at. This might tell you if the stat is buggered if the coolent is too cold for a hot engine which means it's not opening. If its around 180/190 and your gauge is saying it's overheating , the gauge/sender is bad. Get a good mech temp gauge, I don't know how original you want your car to be but good gauges are important, Just mount it under the dash. Some of the Water wetter products do work as well. My car actually runs 10 degrees cooler.