Mech.Elec. guages?

[lexrob]

With so many gauges on the market im lost on which to get. I have used autometers electric ones and had one oil psi sending unit fail. Besides that they seemed to do great. Also i have used sunpros mech. oil gauge and it gave me no problems what so ever.

What do you guys think for the money is the way to go. I want high quality accurate as POSSIBLE gauges could care less about looks. Is mech. or electrical the way to go for accuracy and response time. Maybe some mounting recomendations they are for my rb20det. Oil psi.,coolant temp.,and boost. then eventually an egt. and wideband..

[ravera]

Personally I've run Stewart Warner Gauges on all of my cars and to this date, they're all very reliable and quite accurate. I've had my Oil Press Gauge and my Water Temp Gauges (IMO These and an Accurate Boost gauge are the most important secondary gauges on a car). As far as Mechanical vs. Electrical It's really based on taste. I run electronic gauges on everything but oil pressure and Boost because electronic gauges are usually balanced, which means it smooths out the bumps and spikes that would just become outlying information, but for Oil Pressure and Boost Pressure you really do need to see every single spike in the gauge. Electronic gauges are far easier to route, as you're running electrical lines through the firewall into the dash as opposed to like an oil line for an Oil press gauge, or a a small Fuel Line in the case of fuel pressure etc. etc. Just make sure that on electronic that are for electronics (voltage, amps, etc.) that you check to make sure that they are shunted or non-shunt type. A shunted gauge requires an external resistor of varying size depending on the gauge to be mounted in line with the gauge and the sensor. They're usually cheaper than non-shunt type gauges but they have the added hassle of mounting a shunt resistor somewhere in behind your gauges. As far as AFM's go, AEM's are pretty and all, but as far as clean cut and simple, there are plenty of accurate gauges that provide just a number read out (works just as well for me as a giant flashing bar spinning around a gauge that just distracts you from the number, since 14.7 is the middle of the gauge reading and what most cars run (10-12) is at the bottom half, not much good) and is half or less the price. I'd recommend Innovative or similar since it provides excellent resolution (reading time/sec) and also provides a no-frills, to-the-point readout. As far as Mfg's go, VDO, Stewart Warner, and Smiths have all produced very good gauges for a very long time, so IMO they can all be trusted and AutoMeter in the last 10 years has become as good if not better than those mfg's. As far as sensors go, I'd contact which ever mfg you decide to go with, or read the gauge manuals and see what their reading range is (it's going to be a range in resistance of ohm's) and either check the factory Nissan Gauges for compatibality (usually bigger companies like Autometer have gauges designed to work specifically with certain Car Company's sensors) or use the sensors that the gauge mfg requests you use with the gauge. At the worst, this involves going down to a Ford or GM dealership, or going Junkyard diving and grabbing a few external sensors.

Sorry for the long post, Hope it helps!

Bob

[Burnout240]

Cool post dude

[lexrob]

Wow forgot about this post. Great info. im going with mech. for everything but fuel. The autoguage ones dont actually have it flow through the line for coolant so that was a relief. Oil isnt really a problem but fuel... im a smoker so yea.....bad idea

Im not shur maybe it also doesnt have fluid flowing through it.??