Well, drilling and tapping a whole like my set up pictured above would be much less work than fabricating a blockoff plate and THEN having to tap that anyway.
The only reason I had mine welded is because the mechanical gauges use a 1/2"NPT adapter .
The area I drilled just didnt end up being thick enough to support the adapter.

Iirc, most electric gauges are only 3/8NPT. I originally tapped the exact same spot with this pitch and it fit great.
Either way, you wont get accurate readings until the thermostat opens.
If youre really that against drilling and tapping, why not consider using one of these.
http://store.summitracing.com/partde...5&autoview=sku

 

/\/\ that is the Part I am talking about.For what I intend on doing.I plan on doing the Drilling "thing",But at a Later Date.(everything is "I'll do it later!"),as I am still not sure as to What engine I want to run and Really,there is no sense in Doing it to an engine I am going to replace anyhow.So Ya,the HOSE adapter,for Putting in the Temp Sender..UPPER Rad hose.Correct?..and thanks guys.(hope I didn't stomp on anyone's thread here..but the info is Great!)

 

Because i dont want to cut my 100 dollar samco sport hoses

 

I hear you there. Thats a lott of money to be hacking in two.

As for Styx, yes it is the upper hose. If you plan on tapping it at a later date, why no just keep the cap as is?
It just makes it so much easier to fill the coolant system and get air out.
I also prefer the location mine send is at as opposed to your idea of a "plate" for one more reason.
In the account that there was air in the system, the coolant might not be all the way to the top of the neck.
This would leave the sender out of the coolant flow and send a false reading.

I hope this helps clear up some questions.

 

what about using one of these on the back of a s5 turbo water pump housing.

http://prosportgauges.com/metric-adaptor-kit.aspx

right where the sensor for the stock AC fan goes in? 14mm?

 

Those adapters put the sender further back and out of the coolant flow more.
I ended up drilling out where the AC fan sender goes since not all thermostat necks even have a whole for the senders, some are just solid. Some people drill and tap spots in the waterpump housing, but with a mechanical gauge, there isnt enough room for a 1/2" NPT sender and the tubing. Electrical gauge senders are short enough, and if you were to put an adapter on it, I dont think it would get enough exposure too coolant.

 

on every s5 turbo water pump housing ive seen they have the ac fan sensor which is too big for the sender. so i cant even drill out that spot ha.

 

THREAD BUMP!


Would this be the AC fan sensor that you're speaking of? The little black one underneath the green thermosensor? Back when I had my Haltech, I used this spot for the Haltech water temp sender. Where the thermosensor is, I used one of those metric adapters with my aftermarket autometer gauges and it read pretty close to what my haltech was reading. I'm returning the car to stock with the exception of the aftermarket water temp gauge. The little black plug with the sender attached is where I'm planning on putting the after market sendor. Is this going to cause a problem??

 

Senoir Shaniac!!!

I see you found the thread we talked about...or did we text bout it? Either way, hope you have a great time at Yonder Mountain. Too bad I can't make it up there.

I tossed some pics into the mix. One of them is an electrical sender your talking about. If I've got time, tomorrow my housing will go to a machine shop to get tapped.

I have to wait for new parts to show up at the dealership, they should get there tomorrow. Getting new lower rad hose, housing to turbo hose, and the two studs I butchered removing the housing.

I added another pic of the same sensor with the housing off the engine. My handy FSM lists the sensor on pages E 8-9 as being "water themoswitch connector (A/T)" I haven't searched enough, but is that an ambiguous title for the AC sensor? Or is the sensor only used by automatic transmission models? I like my AC and don't want to loose it. Plus I couldn't use the same spot as my electric sensor is smaller than the OEM.

I'm thinking of either having the machine shop mimic what NZ did mounting the sensor on the front and grinding out enough space for good contact with the coolant.

Unfortunately I don't have my thermostat on hand to size up how deeply it sits in the opening of the housing. But I'm also considering mounting the sensor on the passenger side and under thermostat. I don't think that idea will work for the same reason NZConvertible first location of his sensor didn't work. There just won't be enough room that close to the thermostat for a sensor to fit. It sure would be a convenient spot to put it anyway.

 

Got my housing back from the machine shop...but for whatever reason they didn't grind the inside any. I'm betting that little nub sticking up isn't going to be enough exposure. I picked up some bits for my drill and dremel so I can grind it myself, but if my tools won't reach I'll take it back to the shop. I gotta scoot off to work so I haven't had a chance to really look it over yet, but another option may be to grind the wire side of the tap down some so that the sender/sensor gets more exposure.

 

How thick is the area that they tapped? If you can get to the inside of the housing with a grinder, try and remove some material to get more waterflow to the sensor. Another option would be to drill the OUTside of the housing with a drillbit larger then the outside of the sensor. This way you could get more of the sensor further into coolant flow. It may be hard to get a wrench if you were to do it that way, but I think it maybe be easier than trying to fanagle a dremel around inside that housing.

 

I was thinking of trying to take a little bit from each side. It's a pretty thick area. On the outside it's originally one of the threads for the air pump bracket so there should be plenty of space I can loose there. I was going to griding it flat, but your idea of grinding a recess might be easier. There should be plenty of space on the sender to tighten it down. I've got penty of grinding stones, especially after buying another 4 today, so I should be good.

 

Found the post by NZConvertible to be really helpful, I'm in the process of fitting an Autometer electric water temp gauge while i have my water pump housing off. Drilled, tapped and got out the die grinder now going to paint the housing black, get some new gaskets and wire the gauge up. hope it all works.

 

for all the people ranting about "not being in contact with the coolnt flow"

do you know how heat works? It does not matter how far the sensor probe is sticking into the coolant as long as it's touching the coolant....

the heat in the coolant heats up the end of the probe, as well as the metal surrounding the probe to a pretty close temperature, so it should still get a reading just fine even with only a little bit of it sticking out.

If I'm wrong, prove it and show me, butI will still say that for your average street car, this doesn't really matter, and besides, you should maintain your seven well enough not to ever have cooling problems anyway!

 

Some cooling problems are not maintenance related, they're just karma or kismet or yahtzee, I don't know.

How does one "maintain" a thermostat?
My two year old factory Mazda thermostat failed recently and as the VDO temp gauge zoomed all over the dial, the stock S5 gauge pretended nothing was going on and never wavered.
Lied to me, it did.

Best example of why a S5 should always have an aftermarket water temp gauge I can think of.

 

oh yeah, I was not arguing against HAVING an aftermarket gauge, but rather all the people worried about how much the probe is "In the coolant flow".

 

As to installation, below are pictures on how I chose to approach. Got the idea from this thread I found using the search button at the top of the page (hint, hint)

https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...highlight=temp

The OP in that thread used a regular brass T type fitting.

In my case I used:

2 #6 Push Lock ST's

1 #6 male male T 1/8 npt side

Also did minor retap of the probe fitting so it would match the thread of the T fitting.

Hope this installation alternative helps this discussion.

Not absolutely perfect since it's a bit down stream from the thermostat housing source, so perhaps a few degree's lost by the time it gets to my probe. But some Mazda engineer felt it sufficient for the BAC to operate properly. For me it's more to catch spiking of the water temps, so a maybe +/- 5 degrees actual temp reading is fine from my view.

More on recent comments, just the tip is needed to get a good reading. Further, excess protruding into the water flow, using this installation approach, could create a bit of impinging of the rate of water flow through the BAC.

 

I just received my electric prosport temp gauge. After going through this thread and the link above me i decided to T into my throttle body line.

In the link above it talks about two ground wires needed for certain gauges. Can i run the ground wire from the sender straight to the ground wire on the gauge or do both of them need to be grounded separately?

Also i have a S4 n/a, can i T into the BAC coolant line or is there a different line i should use? I believe the bac line doesnt flow and feel thats the wrong hose to use. Can someone point me the right direction on the proper coolant hose to use?

 

What type of water temps do you see from this setup? highway, city and redlining?