What are the different reasons for having particular gauges??

Boost- measure boost press, check for drops
Oil press- check for no 'drop' zones in press
Oil temp-???????????
etc.. etc...

I have no idea, which ones I want, and am trying to decide which ones to get..........

 

Oil pressure - alerts you if are loosing oil way before the factory fitted sensor

Oil Temp - takes far, far longer for the oil to get up to temp than the water temp gauge on the dash. Hence you can see when it's 'safe' to give the car some stick.

 

hey chris, hmmmm, interesting. ok, so u get votes for those gauges

but wot about all the others that are for sale?

 

I want a torbo boost gauge that someone was talking about on here, but I can't find one anywhere

 

Autometer make some decent ones that are pretty accurate and reasonably priced, such as around £50 for a boost gauge.

The oil temp and pressure gauges, as said, are very good for keeping an eye on the health of the engine generally.

Your boost gauge will show you what pressure you're running, when you're hitting peak, if you get any spikes and so on. Things such as max boost dropping off when giving it full beans might indicate problems such as a worn wastegate actuator (as it can't hold the pressure) so the gauge can help you keep the health of the turbo and it's componants in check. The boost gauge is also the most display most directly related to what you're doing with your right foot, every little push down or lift off makes a difference - I'd love to see a vid of someone driving round a circuit with a boost gauge in shot, you'd really see how they were driving it

An air/fuel ratio gauge will show you if you're running weak or rich. An important use for this is making sure you're not running lean on full boost, ie. lack of fuel, which can lead to detonation and eventually a meltdown as the leaner it gets, the hotter things get.

More for a turbo - intake and exhaust temp gauges. Intake tells you how hot the 'charge' is, again, the higher it goes the more risk of detonation so you can gauge just how much it goes up through heat soak in traffic or if you've been parked up for half an hour, again, as per all the others it'll give you an indication of when you can safely give it loads. The exhaust temp can work in a similar way to the a/f gauge - the leaner things run, the hotter they get, so the exhaust temp will increase. Giving it full beans for a goodly amount of time will also increase temp - things like a top speed run on full chat in every gear. If things get too hot you can ease off before things go pop.

A volmeter is an easy one to indicate the health of your battery

There are even more you could go for that start getting even more into high performance and intricate tuning; fuel pressure, brake system pressure, nitrous pressure, cylinder head temp, and so forth.

With the collective knowladge on this BBS you will easily get answers to questions on what all these safe levels are. I don't drive a scoob as yet, but know all these levels for my motor.

In mine I have 5 gauges - inltake temp and boost in a double a pillar pod and volts, air/fuel and oil pressure in my center console.

I have some Autometer Ultralites in stock if you need any - email me offlist - mook@mjdesignsuk.com

 

have alook at this site someone pointed me too ages ago explains whats whats and whats the diff between electrical and mechanical guages http://www.chiark.com/scooby/gauges.asp