Like most of you, I want to keep my fd away from being a light show, and I have searched the gauge topic. Everyone seems to have a preference for one or another, and ones that they felt saved their motor when something did happen.
Research showed that boost is basically the unanimous number one meter to have...

second get's more difficult to define, including oil pressure, oil temp, water temp, and a/f mix guage...

I basically want to keep my 3, 2 1/4 pod. Currently the pod only has 2 gauges, boost, and fuel pressure. I read fuel pressure is nice t have but I don't know if it is necessary.
The original owner wanted to put a haltech wideband o2 gauge there, but if your car is well tuned do you really need that? also will your feul guage save you from anything if let's say you pump let's go while you're at the track?

the car had a defi unit in it so the guages are automatically rediculously expensive, so i don't really want to buy them all. Please recommed me some gauges for a car that will occasionally see track duty, road coarses...

 

Boost, Oil temp, Water temp, AF.

 

For the most part, gauges like fuel pressure and A/F are for setup/diagnosis purposes. i.e. you don't look at them unless there is a problem. They aren't something that you monitor all the time.

For road course action, I would recommend boost, water temp and oil temp. Use peak/warning/hold gauges as you can't really stare at the while you are on the track, but having the warning system will allow you to get alerted of a problem quickly. Also, having the peak function can playback your highest reading.

 

does the warning feature start beeping or just flashes? i dont understand why people get water temp gauges when they have the commander to watch from.. its the same looking away from the road to see it if its on a gauge or pfc.

 

Depends on the gauge.

When I'm on a road course, I don't look at a single gauge. Having something that can warn me visually and/or audibly is incredibly useful.

 

Wideband is second only to oil pressure and water temp, IMO.

 

mahjik,why both water and oil temp? doesn't water temp reflect oil temp? why oil pressure? do you want that as a warning if something is terriblely wrong?like A leak?

 

Water and oil temp do not directly relate to one another. Both are important.

IMO, I see no reason for an oil pressure gauge. The stock one works fine.

 

From my very limited track experience, your oil temp will most certainly get out of hand before your water, assuming you don't have any blown coolan hoses in the process I'm running a single oil cooler with some water cooling mods (radiator, less cluttered engine bay, aftermarket downpipe). Last time I was on the track, and this happened every session, my oil temp would go up and up (very noticable... it would jump 20 degrees F in the matter of a minute toward the end of my 25 minute session) and I would slow down to get them back in check. About two or three minutes later, the water temp would creep up 5 or so degrees Celcius (not enough to be a problem, since I drove easy after seeing the oil temps) while i was taking a cool down lap or two... just food for thought. Based on my experience, I think the folks who either drive the car in very hot weather and/or are on the track really need to monitor the oil temps.

I have boost, water temp, oil temp, wideband + stock gagues. I was thinking of getting fuel pressure and EGT but that's more info than what I need when I'm driving the car... as Majik said those kinds of things are more useful for someone who's setting up your car (tuning and the like).

 

Yeah i can totally see how some gauges would be too much. I wish I can have all the gauges without cluttering up the car, but that's basically the reality of the situation. I maybe I need a second pillar for the gauges more for tuning, but still, why? I really hate to get of gauges already paid for but sometime you have to do it... those defi gauges are really expensive compared to most meters.

 

I like the side pillar arrangement. Tho too many gauges would have your head spinning. Hard enough to keep one's eyes on the road sometimes, hey?

 

if your looking to limit your light show your best bet is to save for a PFC, that will give you almost every reading you would want (and then some), aswell as the peak/hold ability Mahjik was talking about. if your worried about the price, remember that buying 4 $150 gauges and the pods to put them will already put you almost 3/4 of the way to a PFC with none of the additional functions (but lots of pretty lights and needles ). alot of people will disagree with me on this, but you have to decide what you want, but in terms of return on investment the PFC/Commander is going to be better in the long term IMHO. I have a fuel pressure gauge i built for $20 that works perfectly and has never caused me any problems tucked away in my engine bay out of the way untill i need to troubleshoot or tune.

 

I use boost, wideband, oil temp and monitor water temp with the pfc commander

 

For a street car, boost, water temp, and wideband are my picks. I can see oil temp if you plan on tracking the car, but otherwise it's not going to tell you much.

Oil pressure - as Mahjik stated, the stock gauge works fine. Oil pressure isn't as common or critical a problem on a rotary as it is on a piston engine. If something Very Bad happens, like an oil cooler line blows and you start dumping oil, the oil level sensor will start beeping and light up as the oil level drops, letting you know of the problem.

Fuel pressure - this can be useful for diagnostic purposes, but doesn't need to permanently be in the car. If you were worried your fuel pressure was on the edge, put in a temporary fuel pressure gauge and zip tie it to the windshield wiper or something. If you're tuning the car in and need to watch fuel pressure, get an electric sender and datalog the output. Fuel pressure sweeps so much that it's REALLY hard to keep an eye on it when at full boil.

Boost gauge is a given. Water temp I prefer to have since the cooling system is so vital on these cars. I check mine frequently to see how it's running, and have a warning set up if it gets too hot. Wideband is not necessary for many, but it's a good way to keep an eye on your mixtures at full throttle for spot checking the tune, and it's a good way to see patterns if you're tuning the car yourself, like if you feel a dead spot in the range you can look at the gauge to see if you're rich or lean there.

The PowerFC commander can give you a lot of input, but the screen is so damn bad that it's not super useful as a gauge.

If you can find an HKS Fan Controller (I'm the one FD guy that loves these things ) not only can you have full fan control, but you can monitor water temps accurately with warning and add another sender to monitor oil temps with warning, all in one compact box. But, I think HKS took it off the market.

Dale

 

I've always thought the commander display was difficult to monitor. In my opinion an analog gauge is easier to read, and the stupid display always seems to get washed out by the sun.

 

i set it to show only 4 things, knock, inj duty, ait and water temp.

font size is increased and it does have a peak memory

i once went to 114C going up a long winding hill!!! stock gauge started to barely move but temp went down as soon as i started going down hill.