whats your thoughts on gauges

[gaetano_onsov]

So I have finally started to finish of my EP95 that I started 7 years ago (build thread to follow) but due to being a little bit more grown up and having a wife kids and a house I cant get away with spending as much as I used to. So my question is when it comes to gauges do they all need to be top dollar and what do you actually need? I realise its dependent on what doing with your car and I intend to use my car for track days. See below for my conclusion and please comment with your thoughts. I have also noticed that some of the Top brand gauges I have had in the past were not any better quality than the cheaper ones.

When I seay cheap I mean cheaper. The total cheap analog gauges are no good and you don't want to be running any services in to the car.

Water temp- Doesn't need to be that accurate so you could get away with not top dollar
Oil temp/pressure- Same as above and do you really need both I have thought about having a oil temp gauge and just having pressure switch with led and buzzer if i lose pressure.
Boost- If you buy a decent boost controller it will do both.
AFR- Top dollar and with that you can input to your ECU

Peter

 

[Calum122]

Top dollar AFR, but can you buy cheap ones?

An AEM AFR would suffice.

Boost, well that's just an indicator right? You just want to ensure it's not overboosting so even just an analogue one would do.

Water temp, built into the car and the engine will probably seize before the coolant temperature goes up if there is a failure (probably wouldn't bother)

Oil temp, from what I've seen of these cars on the track, this is probably quite important. Often I see starlets only handling a few laps of aggressive driving before pitting to cool off.

 

[gorganl2000]

here's another option, utilising a "screen" to see all those sensor readings....like the defi display, control unit, sensors, etc
it will be pricey, but may be better than trying to look/monitor at 4+ guages

for the track, i think reputable brands (defi, blitz, aem, turbosmart, apexi, etc.) for afr, ebc, oil pressure and oil temp would be essential...you want items that you can rely on

 

[Calum122]

On the cheap, you can actually get a canbus reader for the Starlet and a little app on your phone to read all the sensors that your ECU knows about.

 

[gorganl2000]

On the cheap, you can actually get a canbus reader for the Starlet and a little app on your phone to read all the sensors that your ECU knows about.

thats true...you mean this?

the problem i can see, is that it reads every 1.3 secs which may be a "long" time for some set-ups