Which of these two gauges would you install if room is limited?
 

Me and a friend were discussing this:

Water psi, or oil temp?

Only have room for one additional gauge on a blower motor application because the boost and fuel pressure gauge are taking up all the extra room on the dash. All the basic gauges there otherwise.

The real question is: Which of the two are more important????


I'm voting for oil because the motor has a circulating pump... I figure as long as the engne cooling is ok, the intercooler should also be seeing decent water.

Love to hear your thoughts and opinions:drink:

I'm not an engine builder so it will be interesting to see what someone that is will say but I would go with water press. My thought process would be that most of the time a high oil temp could be traced back to lack of cooling water so if you had a water press guage you'd see a drop in press before an actual increase in oil temp.

Oil temp...

I would say oil temp. If you lose water pressure, the water temp will go up within 10-20 seconds anyway.

And in 10-20 seconds you could crack an exhaust manifold. I vote water pressure.

I'm gunna say oil temp , but if you can make room on the side panel and add a few more gauges it surely would'nt hurt :drink:

I'd say do both if you can. Too much oil temp or too much water psi can have you pulling the engines out and rebuilding them. Even if you have to mount a seperate gauge pod, might not look the best, but it is what it is!

I would do away with volts and use both. Volts arent near as important as those two

Until the voltage regulator in the alternator takes a crap, and fries your ignition boxes. :eek:

If you have a GPS most have a volts display you can add to the screen.
Steve

There has to be another location that you can put some of the non-critical gauges, like on the passenger side?

Water Pressure.

lol... no gps, and it doesn't have a volt gauge on the dash. Rpms, speedo, oil, temp, fuel level, and trim (which is going to mech indicator to open up a hole). All of what I consider essitential the bare essentials is there:D

Talking to a builder, oil temp sounds like its more important. Also, might have to do a couple of pods on the dash for the fuel psi, and boost as it is.

You can use your water temp gauge, as a oil temp gauge. You would need another water temp sender, compatible with whatever range your water temp gauge is. Say its 100-250*. Connect the sending unit wires to a switch on the dash. Then you can flip the toggle to either the oil temp sending unit, or the water temp sending unit. You can do this with a oil temp gauge too. Its just that most oil temp gauges start their reading at 140*, which is no good for water temp reading. If you peg the 250* water temp gauge(when reading oil temps), you are hot, and should back out of the throttles. :coolcowboy: Of course most of the time i would leave it on water temp. But, can work nice when trying to dial in your oil temps.

I really dont beleive oil temp is "more important" than water psi. Too much water PSI can lead to lots of problems, which can destroy a engine. Of course too high or too low oil temps can hurt the engines also. I'd give up my speedo before i gave up either one of those gauges. All of the gauges are real important, especially on a new engine install. If you skip water psi, and go out and run wot and not realize you have 35-40psi of water psi, you might blow a intake gasket or head gasket and fill the crankcase with water. same goes for the oil temps. If you were to go out and run hard, you wont realize your oil cooler is too small and can really do some damage.

Post up a pic of your dash/helm area. im sure we can find some places to stick a couple gauges :drink:

I said Oil because its a blower motor. If it wasn't, I would go with the water.

Fixx
 

Their you go giving up my secret's joe :drink:

Thats a great idea with the temp gauge... but it would be nice to be able to monitor both at the same time on a long fast run.
You really think that water psi would be more important than oil temp? Even running a circulating pump (which I figure would control water flow/psi).

Its getting Livorsi gauges when we get closer to finishing all the winter upgrades. Also mech pop up indicators for tabs/trim. Here is the dash right now and an older pic:

You could get an High oil temp sender 245*F-265*F ran into the alarm system with a red LED light and use a water pressure gauge.

I moved my gas and I think volt to the flat part under my steering wheel to accommodate oil temp gauges.

Yeah, thats one other thing- I'm tall and my knees are usually touching the dash, so I don't want anything on the flat part below.

Actually looking at the pictures.. I can see moving the fuel gauge to the bottom right of the steering wheel, giving me enough open holes for water psi and oil temp in the dash. Then do the boost and fuel psi in pods above at the corner of the windscreen??- should be in line of sight with the heads up trim indicators.

To me another option is install a PRV to dump excessive water pressure and run the oil temp gauge. However looking at you old panel there appears to be room to run both by off setting the guages, also by relocating the ing. key and placing a gauge there.

There's nothing but room on that dash ! :eek:

I have a hybrid glass electronic dash. I struggled with this as well.

I chose a tach and a water temp gauge.
(Ilmor has excellent oil temp control. )

I moved my secondary gauges above the cabin door.

You can back off hot oil and let it cool, but water temp off the chart indicates a restriction or a problem.

Pressure could be fine but you could still be overheating. Depend on where the sender is placed.

Without filling holes and doing glass work to re-arrange gauges, I don't see a ton of room available. I see maybe some room to the right of the helm, but its tight back there with the steering hoses.. and the wheel is going to be blocking the view in that area anyways.