I have a 2013 5.0. It never has run right in the middle, nor has anything else I've had in twenty plus years of driving Fords, unless the radiator was needing replaced. My Town Car runs fairly close to halfway, but about a sixteenth under. My experience with Ford trucks is typically the temp gauge is at about 3/8. If you consider that under a heavy load, they typically run hotter, I don't want my truck at halfway empty. I have noticed that trucks with towing package and thus larger radiators tend to run cooler on the gauge.

Not trying to be argumentive, just that I stand by my statement, especially for a truck with larger radiator.
I had a 91 300 I6 that ran a full half the way up, sometimes a bit above. I rear ended a car in the rain, (just turned wipers on and smeared) so had to out a new radiator in it immediately. The temperature gauge dropped below half afterward. Shortly thereafter, had to replace water pump. Temp started holding steady in 1/3- 3/8 range.

 

My 03 runs EXACTLY halfway up and has since I bought it in 06. The pointer is pointing at exactly 10:30 on a clock face.

You do realize that on a cold start, it climbs slowly till it reaches 1/2, and stays there until it overheats, than it immediately climbs to full hot and it goes into alternate firing safe mode? That is by design. At 1/2 it can be anywhere from 195 to 240 or so. If it never reaches 1/2, your thermostat is either too cold or stuck partway open. Remember it's taking temps from the cylinder head temp sensor, it doesn't have a coolant temp sensor.

 

I want to emphasize first that I don't have animosity for you glc, and in fact nearly just dropped the subject where it was.
I'm not disputing where the temp is taken. Nor do I dispute that it's normal and OK for your 4.2 V6 to run smack in the middle. But there's not a doubt in my mind that if you put the radiator that comes standard with the V8s with towing package in your truck, that your truck will run cooler. Regardless of where the temp comes from, it IS affected by the cooling system directly. Try running very low on coolant, and my point is proven. In the old days especially, we used to deliberately put a cooler thermostat in trucks that were working for a living, especially if they had a tendency to run a little warm.

I'm curious to know what actually did fix the problem for the original poster.

 

Let's keep this discussion going - I doubt that my truck would run any cooler with a heavy duty radiator except in marginal cooling situations when the thermostat is wide open trying to cool it down, the thermostat will just be closed more. There's a reason they use 195* stats these days. The warmer it runs (within reasonable limits) the more fuel efficient it's going to be. The PCM adjusts fuel/air ratio dynamically using inputs from a lot of different sensors including the CHT, the warmer the engine is, the less fuel it has to schedule to run optimally. I remember the old days before electronic engine controls, we used to use a 195* stat in the winter so the heater would work better. In the summer, we didn't care and we used 180* or even 160* to keep it from overheating. If you did that today, it will run excessively rich as the PCM will think it's not fully warmed up yet.

The gauge is not a true linear analog gauge like it used to be - it's a semi-"idiot gauge". I suppose it's possible that there are production variations where the "normal" position is not exactly at 1/2, but that's how it's designed. It's only linear till it reaches "normal" and then becomes an idiot gauge unless it overheats (or the thermostat sticks open and it starts running too cool). They did this because people would get worried if it went up and down like a true analog gauge would with normal increases and decreases of cylinder head temperature.

The original poster did in fact have a defective thermostat that caused it to run too cool, and his gauge behavior did correspond.

 

I think we may not be as far apart in opinion as we seem at first glance. I understand your point about idiot gauges. Let's just say that I've owned numerous vehicles, 90% of them Ford, and the idiot gauge invariably was at least a little under halfway when all things were normal. And the heavier duty the cooling system, the farther down normal was to a point. I will concede this much also: previous to my 13, the latest model truck I had was a 94. The latest model vehicle was an 08 'Stang. Regardless, 3/8-7/16 up the gauge has been the normal average, with the behemoth 460 trending more to 1/3, and that heater would run you out of the truck.

My original point was that 1/3 is not outside the range of normalcy, especially if the vehicle has a larger radiator.

 

That may not be true - it all depends on what the REAL coolant temperature is and where/how it's measured. The gauge is not measuring coolant temperature directly, it's computing it off of the cylinder head temp, and this has been the case since sometime in the 90's. I don't know whether your 94 was coolant or head temp, and I also don't know if it was an idiot gauge or a real one. If it was coolant and real, I'd believe 1/3 would be perfectly normal. Also, the 94 wasn't OBD2 and it didn't control things anywhere near as precisely as it does now.

 

I would hazard a guess that the OBD2 may have arrived in the 97 4.6 and 5.4 engines. My 94 was a OHV 302. With these remarks, I INTEND to quit beating this extremely dead horse.

 

Just a note, cooling fans may sound like the wind when ya first start your truck up, but should go away as soon as you take off driving. If you still heard the wind noise when driving, replace it.