It actually sounds to me like you're low on coolant. My Jeep leaks coolant and whenever it gets low the temp gauge will go real high and then drop, and the heater doesn't work well. This is because the cooling system of your car is supposed to be a closed system, full of coolant and no air. When coolant leaks out, the space it used to occupy is now occupied by air, which does not transfer heat well. When 'air' is passing through your cooling system, no heat can be transferred from your engine to the heater and radiator, resulting in a hot engine and no heat at the heater. Then when a pocket of water passes through the system, the temperature gauge quickly falls as the water absorbs the heat from the engine. The hot water that cools the engine is where the heater gets it's heat from as well, so when water passes through the heater core, the heater works, but when it's filled with air, it doesn't.
Hot water runs through the heater core regardless of whether or not your thermostat is open or closed. That's why your heater works in the winter even before the engine is at normal operating temperature. The fact that the heater stops working is a good sign that the thermostat is probably not the culprit.
As for the water pump. If the water pump was bad, your temp gauge would go into the red and stay there. Water pumps generally don't work intermittently. Either it's good and ot works, or it's bad and it doesn't.
However, if you are in fact low on water, as I suspect, it means you probably have a leak somewhere. The leak could be in the water pump housing gasket, so depending on where you take it for repairs, they may try to sell you a new water pump anyhow. So just beware of that.
It could be the thermostat or the water pump . id change the thermostat first and if that doesent fix it then you are looking at putting a water pump on
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