Hey Guys,
I am in the middle of an S5 TII swap and will be buying some Prosport gauges. Since I am pulling my AC logicon, and to keep things clean, I plan on starting with three gauges and putting them into a din slot where the logicon was (similar to this thread: https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...rosport+gauges).

My question is, which gauges would be best to start with? I've read around and figured I'll definitely start with a boost and water temp gauge, but for the third, I was unsure whether it would be best to select an oil temp, oil pressure, or fuel pressure gauge to start. Any input on this would be helpful. Thanks

Link to gauges: http://prosportgauges.com/amber_whit...ce_gauges.aspx

Jason

 

Boost,water temp and oil pressure are a pretty good combination.
You can always put a Fuel pressure gauge on your Fuel regulator inside the Engine bay.After all,you only need to set pressure and that is that.No sense on Overcrowding your Dash with an array of gauges that you don't necessarily need to look at all the time.
Idea: you can get Multi function gauges that will read oil,water,etc on one gauge.If that is your cup of tea,then you can put other gauges in to "fill up" your space in the dash.!
Suggestion: make sure that the gauge placement is going to be Sufficient to read in both day and night.Some placements Like the Idiot light area is great at a glance but at night the gauges will tend to Reflect into the Windshield and make it a Pain when driving.It makes it hard to see out of the Windshield as you think it is Car lights.(you have to really look through the glare to see out of the windshield).
I hope that helps you a bit.

 

It's kind of hard to decide on which gauges would be beneficial, as they all would be, but personally I would go with an A/F gauge for the third. There's nothing worse than going lean on rotary. At least you know when to shut the car off. But as misterstyx69 said, a multi-function gauge would be best, that way you wouldn't have 10 gauges all around inside your car. Check out PLX, they have some nice ones.

 

Hmmmm, ok, so its pretty much between A/F and Oil Pressure. My OEM has an oil pressure gauge on it but is that a useless gauge like some of the others? Or could it get me by for now?

As for the multigauges, I do like those and will probably end up getting one for diagnostic purposes, however I will probably eventually track the car and would like to be able to see all of my gauges without having to flip through the menus with a remote.

 

In all honesty, the stock oil pressure gauge usually functions just fine. If you can afford a wideband setup, then do an AFR gauge (and if you need it ie. fuel mods, exhaust, etc). If not, I'd recommend an oil temp gauge. Oil temp can tell you a lot about whats going on in the engine. And it's important to know what type of temps your oil is running at due to thermal breakdown (which essentially renders oil's lubricating properties to almost nothing).

Long story short, the stock oil pressure gauge will tell you, more or less, that you have oil getting where it needs to go. The oil temp gauge tells you that its still doing its job.

 

A lot of people do complain about the stock oil pressure gauge, but I had an aftermarket VDO gauge in my old RX-7 and its readings were within what I would deem a tolerable range (5 psi) of each other. So either they both were wrong together, or they were right. The stock water temp gauge is slow to respond, but it does respond. I had aftermarket oil temp and pressure and water temp gauges in a DIN panel on my previous FC.

I hated having those redundancies on my old RX-7 - it was wasted space that could be going to something else. Which is why I will be doing something different with my TII restoration.

 

My first gauges are turbo, water temp and oil temp.

fuel pressure is not realy intresting actualy except for tuning or solving a problem.
oil presure, i got one on my stock gauges heard no trouble about it.
only heard about some problems with the water temp gauge.

Got my self a ngk wideband to mount behind the steering wheel.

 

My first gauge was a boost gauge (since the stock one is useless), mounted on the steering column which is a much better location than the center console since it is in the line of sight, and is a gauge you would want to monitor frequently.

That would leave you with 3 openings in the a/c location:
Having an actual coolant temp gauge is more useful than having an "oh ****" needle (even if it is linear) so I replaced that. My Oil pressure gauge has never worked since I got the car so I replaced that as well, however if your stock one works there no real benefit to replacing it. A wideband would definitely be a good idea and the Innovative XD-16 can display multiple readings (volt/egt/temp etc). Which leaves one more.... Fuel pressure is good to know as fuel pressure issues are annoying to diagnose, especially if yo haven't rewired your fuel pump, plus it can alert you to leaks and the onset of pump failure, or a clogging filter/sock. Oil temp is cool, but unless you are road racing or spinning to 10k is not really that important on a street car.

As JerryLH3 pointed out redundancy of gauge functions can be very annoying (to some...) I mounted the coolant temp/ oil pressure gauges in the stock location to avoid that. I have a gauge pod where the idiot lights used to go and have a wideband in one of the slots, which still leaves 2 extra slots for gauges to be decided later. The extent to which reflections inhibit night time visibility has been grossly exaggerated (at least w/ amber gauges) especially since they are tied into the dimmer switch.

https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-generation-specific-1986-1992-17/writeup-jspec-gauge-cluster-938512/

 

Hey everyone, thanks for all the input! I will be tracking the car once it is all put together so I think my gauges will start with a boost, water temp, and oil temp followed by a wideband shortly after (prolly move the boost gauge behind the wheel at that time).

To sharingan 19: awesome mod and great write up! I have an extra gauge cluster lying around so maybe I'll try it out when I have some spare time. By the way, is your boost a 52mm and the other two 45mm?

Jason

 

I would consider spending a little bit more money on your boost and WB 02. I suggest AEM UEGO and TruBoost. I've heard alot about how prosports are not very accurate.

 

i've got defi, fine so far

 

I can't speak authoritatively on the Prosport WB, but the boost, temp and psi gauges are accurate. Facts > Hearsay. Innovative offers a wide range of sensors that can be read through their gauges which offers greater versatility. The ability to combine a boost gauge and boost controller is quite cool however.