Should I bother with gauges for oil temperature or pressure?
I fitted oil temp gauge to my Land Rover - biggest waste of time ever - the needle hardly gets off the 80 degree mark, even with oil cooler airway
blocked off.!!
(gauge does work but oil doesn't seem to get that hot))
I fitted only an oil pressure gauge to the Falcon as you can tell its hot by the reduced pressure. All depends on if you are really going to thrash it say on a track and are not sure if you have a large enough cooler. Make sure the warning light is both bright and easy to see, most production cars lights are hopeless after thoughts, I keep toying with fitting a buzzer too, like we had in the busses that came on with any fault light
Pressure gauge only, because...
1. Too many gauges can confuse or be misread in the heat of the moment.
2. Pressure will drop if temp gets too high anyway.
3. Less expense and complexity/less to malfunctiona nd confuse you.
Finally, fit a decent size/brightness low pressure warning lamp in your line of sight. When you're driving you want to concentrate on driving,
not monitoring a multitude of guages. A simple lamp will alert you quickly to any problems.
Id do the oil pressure and water temp. If the water sky rockets the oil will be too.
if worried about low oil pressue fit a BIGGER warning light
I have just a pressure gauge - and I rarely look at it in normal driving. It's only there for occasional reassurance.
I did change the oil pressure switch to one that makes the light come on at a higher pressure. That originally caused a bit of ring twitter when it
flickered on at tick-over! (still had loads of pressure). The risk with the original one was it came on to tell you that your engine was about to
seize solid in 0.1 seconds...
We have a dual oil pressure/oil temperature gauge fitted. It's comforting to know the engine is operating within the parameters stated in the
manual. We use it more so on trackdays to hopefully give an early indication of potential oil pressure drops. Whether we could avoid any engine damage
by a sudden drop in pressure is another issue but again, it's nice to know the engine is still operating within the parameters even when being
thrashed on a trackday.
Phil
[Edited on 26-2-09 by Hellfire]
quote:
Originally posted by David Jenkins
That originally caused a bit of ring twitter when it flickered on at tick-over!
LMAO "ring twitter"
Oil temp is a good thing on track, looked at mine one day on the back straight at Mosport 350 deg F, shut it down immediately, rod bearing just about
to go, set of bearings and a micro polish on the crank.
Another lap and new crank, new block, and at least one new rod and maybe a set of pistons, very expensive.
If the oil's too hot won't the water be too? Therefore only water temp would really be needed. There is something a bit cool in having lots of dials and looking like a cockpit, but then I can see me being done for speeding (again) because I was looking at the wrong one