Just curious what extra gauges people are using in their built or stock NA builds, and why.

So far the only one I'm sold on is a Wideband o2.

I want an A-pillar dual pod, but need to fill both of them! My turbo FB was easy, A/F and Boost.

 

The only gauge I added that was useful was my AEM wideband for tuning. I do have a vacuum gauge as well, but that was primarily to determine engine health and to give me an idea of what a map sensor would see based on throttle and RPM loads. I still want a reliable coolant temp or oil temp gauge due to the OE coolant gauge being notoriously useless

 

I like the vacuum gauge idea - that's a handy one to know.

 

Oil temp: water temp rises faster, so when your water shows operating temp the oil temp is still to low.

Water temp: the stock one sucks.

Wideband: No question, get a good quality one, with a 5v out to log.

 

+ if you are going to tune anything, getting an egt for each rotor probably isn't a bad idea.

 

Mine is a bit messy (in car) at the moment, Need to tidy it up, Ive got :

Wideband
Narrow band (*****)
Water Temp
Oil pressure
Vacume

Would like to throw away the Narrowband and get a EGT one day.

 

i say oil temp

 

at the moment, i have no extra gauges and due to my Gen II ignorance i think i fried the stock oil pressure gauge.

here is what i plan to run though:

1. water temp - i figured it'll be more accurate (and precise) than stock
2. oil temp - i want to monitor it
3. oil pressure - i currently don't have a functional one (see above)
4. EGT - i want to monitor these
5. wideband - self explanatory
6. boost - self explanatory

 

I installed a tach...

 

My understanding is that EGT gauges are more useful for carb'ed setups than EFI, and it only really tells you whether you need to immediately turn off the car because something has gone horribly wrong (which can also be determined with the o2 sensor flipping out). If anything I think that a dual EGT would be most useful in that you can tell if one rotor or injector is being naughty.

I'm liking the Oil Temp to round it out. The water temp and oil pressure in the stock cluster (granted they aren't as great but they at least give a general idea). The only other one I could see as nice but not quite as necessary would be vacuum gauge.

Hey we should also post pics of our gauge setups. A-pillars, center consoles, dash.

I personally LOVE the A-pillar look, IMO makes the car look so legit! However my primary concern is that for the very reason i like it, it SCREAMS "modded car! break into me and take all my parts." Thats why I generally keep the interior empty, clean, and STOCK(ish).

I'm still going to run an A-pillar cluster tho I'm thinking:
*Wideband o2
*Oil Temp
*vacumn gauge under the driver's dash

 

I have an oil pressure gauge because the OEM one died, and the tach, but that's it.

I do have a wideband, but I only look at it when tuning, so I just use the readout in the tuning software. When driving it's don't know - don't care. Same for coolant temp. If the engine's not fountaining coolant then I'm better off not knowing, and if it IS boiling over then I know everything I need to know.

 

hmmm... yall run some strange gauges for NA... or I talk to too many piston people who call some of these gauges useless.... Ive been told over and over that EGT is useless, and wideband is useless (for NA)


I have:
water temp
oil temp
oil pressure

 

If the car is tuneable, then a wideband is pretty much a must to actually dial it in. How many cars are tuned on a dyno w/o any kind of A/F measurement? A narrow band o2 is too slow to react and ide love to see a piston person try to tune a/f's on a rotary by reading plugs or basing the tune off the smell of the exhaust. EGT's have their place and can let you know more information of whats goin on in the combustion chamber than what an A/F gauge can, in fact some people prefer to tune off of EGT''s.

 

You need to tell those people to be quiet, they obviously don't know what they are talking about.

There isn't any gauge you would install on a tuned turbo that would not be useful on an NA, except for a boost gauge (wich could be replaced by a vacuum gauge if you realy wanted to).

Lets say you have a stock Turbo FC, you would probably want to add oil temp and water temp gauges, and unless you have some way of adjusting fuel/spark wideband and egt isn't realy neccecary, same is true for a Stock NA FC.

 

It depends on how scary-edge you want to get. Detonation is usually not an issue. On piston engines where detonation isn't an issue, you can more power until you can pour the pistons out through the oil pan from the heat. Rotaries, you still have to worry about things like apex seal temperature since the exhaust has to go past it.

Ceramic apex seals sound better now, yeah?

 

like PJ, i've noticed that when you, or your drivers are driving hard, they don't look at gauges, so most of them are useful in tuning, but completely useless while driving.

they ARE very useful when you're putting the car together, so you can see how its working.

EGT is handy in an NA, the cat melts @700C, the apex seals melt @1100C, and best power is around 900-950C.

AFR, is great as a tuning tool, it really speeds things up.

oil and water temps are nice too.

 

Oh even on the street, I'm mainly concerned with boring things like speedometer and fuel level. The oil pressure gauge is nice because I don't want to rev the engine very high with cold oil, so I wait for idle oil pressure to drop from 90psi to ~60psi before I'll take it over 3000rpm. After that, who cares? If something catastrophic happened, even sweeping the gauges every 10 seconds would still probably be too long before engine damage happened, and anyway the normal procedure with a failure is "drive it home" so nothing changes there either.

I've noticed a trend in rally cars that the driver has only one "gauge" - a shift light. Everything else is trivia...

 

lmao, exactly! our drivers figured out that the race car overheated cause it stopped running, and when they spit on the crank pulley it boiled off, they completely ignored the perfectly functional coolant temp gauge that was pegged.

your best choice is really to replace the old coolant hoses with GOOD QUALITY hose like the OEM hoses. using good clamps, like the OEM spring clamps. the screw clamps loosen up, and hoses like to pop off, especially if the hose is on a plastic part.

your rally car trend is sort of proof of concept.

 

A buzzer like the oil level buzzer are nice, so when i can make it a priority i will get some kind gauges with a warning buzzer/light so you actually can be made aware that something is getting close to where you don't want it to be.

 

I like that. You don't really need to watch them all the time - just when there's something requiring your attention.

 

It has been decided. For the sake of tuning - I need all the help i can get N00b al3rt -

AEM Wideband
Auto Meter EGT 0-2k

I will be building a stand-alone 6port/VDI CO2 actuation system, so I may get a pressure (boost) gauge for that to keep an eye and make sure things dont go south, but honestly I dont want to be a poser having a "boost" gauge in an N/A car. Even tho its legit.

 

Just the basics, and I only added the volt meter to keep it symmetrical. Also a GPS for a spedo but that just suctions onto the window.



Volts, tach, water temp, oil pressure, fuel level.

 

to avoid starting a new thread, whereabouts would i plumb a vacuum gauge into a nikki carb? it's got a million vacuum ports on it, are there some which give a better reading than others, or should i just pick any one and go with it?

 

nofrills - the strongest reading would be most accurate - as there's no way you could read MORE vacuum than there actually is.

So the EGT sensor kept falling out, and I dont like the idea of a stick obstructing exhaust gasses thats held in merely by a set screw (i hate set screws. i even made a thread about how much i hate set screws). So the EGT gauge is for sale, and I'm swapping it for a water temp gauge to accurately read my fancy new aluminum radiator

So:
Wideband O2 (AEM uego)
Water temp (Auto Meter Sport-Comp 100-250)

 

Individual EGT's damn near tell you everything. Unevenness in compression readings bast on temp differential. Potential clogging of injectors if one chamber starts going leaner than normal. Tuning by wideband only gives you the combined A/F ratios of both or 3 chambers (3 rotor). You could have perfect A/F ratios but not know which chamber is lean or rich. After installing them on my 20b, I could never be without them from now on.