I'm actually about to design a mach meter with a Temp probe just so that the madness stops
Thank heavens for that - then OS and I can go back to sleep.
The simulators don't necessarily reproduce exactly what the aircraft will do in all failure situations
Absolutely. Sims are fancy PCs at best and hopeless at worst. The further one gets away from the run of the mill stuff (as tweaked by the owner's sim techs) the more fanciful the whole thing gets. I've seen sims do things which are so far removed from reality that one can only shake one's head. Caution is required when being innovative in sim training as it is a short step to negative training.