Gauges and alarms
 

Hey all - was wondering what everyone was using/their opinions on aftermarket gauges for track days. I've noticed myself a few times forgetting to look at my oil pressure/water temps for several laps and thought it would be great to have gauges which just sent out a siren to alert you went there's a problem. I found exactly that in the elite 10 series at glow shift and was thinking about getting a water temp/oil temp/oil pressure setup. They, at least at face value, have a great system in place to get you any one of a million gauges, but before I drop $400 on their stuff, I thought I would ask you fellas (ladies) if you had any ideas better than that. What I dont want is to be staring at my gauges constantly. I just installed the TDR oil pressure sender kit and while it works and is just fine, I realized Iwould need to be staring at the cluster to see if/when it lost pressure and that's just no good. Thanks again!

Funny enough, I was just reading some old threads on this yesterday. The consensus I was seeing, is that if you're on a standalone, to just setup protections in your tune for oil pressure, oil temp, coolant temp, etc...

Personally, I'm considering getting a real coolant temp, oil pressure gauge and boost gauge when I install my turbo. I can monitor clt via my phone, so I can do a few laps and see where I'm at with that. I should probably setup some protections though...

You are correct in that trying to watch gauges while track lapping or otherwise spirited driving is not conducive (or safe) to watching gauges. I like, and have all those gauges you mention in the cockpit but they are only really backups to the electric gauges that feed the ECU. Water pressure is an extra that I added last year after unknowingly losing coolant on the track and subsequently the head gasket. Gauge only measures air temp when there’s no water left in it so water pressure is my added protection. Glow shift gauges have worked fine for me. I wired up the cluster check engine light to the ECU and set to flash when one of the parameters is at my early warning point and set to solid on when something is at my shut-it-down protection point. When it just flashes I know to check gauges and see what’s going on, usually it’s just cool it for a lap. Otherwise I can just focus on driving and know that temps and pressures are within my chosen safe zone if no flashing CEL. I also have a Bluetooth dummy phone mounted in the cockpit to be able to see what the ECU is reading if or when I want.

Are you running an after market ECU to create that CEL flash system?

Yes. MAXX/Race ECU but others would do that as well.

You piqued my interest, since every Autometer gauge with warning light is like $300 each. TBH, the Autometers have a nice, bright little light that will be pretty different. For those GS gauges, I’m not sure changing the digital LED color on a gauge is enough, It’d still force you to glance over periodically, unless you want to buy those warning lights like an Autometer Shift light - for every gauge.

If you’re on a strict budget, consider looking for good senders with integrated warning posts or warning contacts. VDO gauge senders are common and very reliable. That cheap eBay shit from China doesn’t work - I’ve tried. They die fast. The downside of a sender-based warning light is they’re not adjustable. But if you find the right one, it’s a simple matter of linking up some 18 gauge wire and 12v LEDs wherever the hell you want in your Line of Sight.

I used a trailer taillight, no way that was going to be missed. But that was Racecar. Plenty of options for more discreet lights for a road car that will still grab your attention. My engine builder said you have maybe 5 seconds to save an engine if you have catastrophic loss of oil pressure (sg split oil line), so you need to see the warning, and react FAST.

My innovate SCG-1 is a wideband boost controller. It allows you to set cuts for both boost and AFR....I haven't seen it happen yet, so not sure if its a warning light or just cuts fuel or boost depending on what you have it programmed to do. Example my boost is set at 14.5psi (a big high) and AFR is 13.4 (a bit lean for my liking) so I will be reducing both.

I ended up purchased 2x Oil Pressure Gauges (one for water pressure), Water Temp, and Oil Temp. They seem to have a really cool setup. The water pressure/temp will be installed into a hose coupler and the oil temp/pressure into an oil filter sandwich plate. I just wanted these for the audible alert, so I'll honestly probably just stick them all in the glove box once setup as I don't want my interior looking like the starship enterprise. I'll report back how easy/much it sucks to install.

Not sure how useful for coolant that OP gauge will be. Coolant is pressurised to around 1 bar, so an OP needle is not going to be far off the peg normally, and therefore is not going to move far when dropping.

I went the warning light route, with a pressure sender that triggers the light at about half pressure. You could get a gauge with a 0-20psi range if you really want the gauge, that will give you a better range of needle movement to see and respond to.

We always run a coolant pressure warning light. Triggers faster than coolant temp. Holed radiator or leak drops pressure, blown head gasket raises pressure. Takes a few sessions to determine what pressures to set. For forced induction, we also like a low fuel pressure light.

What do you set it to for the warning light? I just installed of glowshift gauges so I can set audible alarms for min/max on oil/water pressure and temp.

Takes some tuning. Assuming the sensor is on the head and not radiator. Low pressure should be below cap pressure but it will trigger on cooldown laps when the system is refilling. High pressure will be much higher than cap pressure. I would start at something like 18psi low, 25psi hot and do a few sessions to fine tune the range. Just get used to it flickering exiting T1 on a cooldown lap. Once its drawn enough from the reservoir, pressure goes back to normal and the light goes out, usually by the time you get back to your pit spot. But you do want it to trigger on cooldown, Don't raise the lower threshold to keep the light off. That light tells you the system has no leaks as is functioning properly.

For my drag car, I'm setting up a panel of LEDs. One big green one if everything is good., then an array of yellow/red for various sensors to for caution/warning status of each system. I have 7 or 8 sensors feeding into it. Going to use an Arduino to run it. Everything is deisgned, most parts ordered, so it will come together soon.

But I did it this way because I have no time to look at a gauge when racing. But I wanted some info, mainly if it's ok/meh/bad. The warning system does it.

Anyone have any suggestions on oil pressure sender placement? I've tried in an oil sandwich plate and now in the stock sender location and both places drop the gauge to either 0 or almost 0 psi during heavy braking.

The glowshift system sells a high-pressure coolant line coupler with an adapter. Not sure if I'm allowed to post links to retail, but it basically looks like a PVC pipe couple and has a 1/8 threading for the sender. It takes its sweet time when the car is cold to show up anything, but seems to do fine once it is with the water temp and pressure. The pressure seems to stay super stable around 10 to 11psi and the temps climbs/drop normally. I figured if it continues to stay that stable, I'll set the alarm for the pressure to 8psi and go from there. Thanks for your advice!

I logged some water pressure data yesterday and this scatter plot is from session 1. The sensor is at the coolant reroute on the back of the head because it was easy to put in but not the data I was expecting to see. I’ll tee in a sensor in the radiator hose when I get a chance to mess with it. Should I have expected this data? Curious if others have logged data on the back like I did.


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f7d3020549.png

That looks about right. What matters is the relative pressure, the deltas from cooldown laps to full throttle, more than the absolute numbers. If you put the sensor somewhere else, you'll get a different range. Not many builders do coolant pressure though.

I always wondered why very few people use a coolant pressure sensor, now I know why, so many variables. I keep looking at this Craig Davis kit every year or so. It uses a simple float to say yes/no fluid, but is stupid expensive and the controller is overcomplicated with a start up test buzzer you can't turn off apparently. I just want a simple warning light but they don't sell the float separately.
https://daviescraig.com.au/product/l...it-12-24v-1035

We had two systems

One was a set of programmable TFT gauges in standard diameter with warning light functions. So we added the pressure sensor for a low/high warning light on coolant temp.

The other was a digital dash with programmable warning lights getting its signal from the ECU. This is preferred as it allows you to log everything with engine data.

Just to complete my thread. I installed the GlowShift Elite10 series, 2x oil pressure (1 used for water pressure), 1x water temp, 1x oil temp. I used the oil filter sandwich plate (I had to remove the intake manifold brace - why didn't I do that sooner) for there to be enough space. I picked the Elite10 series because it has an audible alarm based on min or max settings that you define and you can choose from about 10 different color patterns which I wanted to try to match the rest of my night time dash.


Everything works as expected with the only drawback at the moment being that the water pressure gauge doesn't get any information and the alarm for minimum pressure goes off for a few minutes until the first coolant cycle. I guess also since the pressure gauge only picks up about 10psi, and the gauge goes to 90, the scaling is weird. I also mounted them center console with the Flyin Miata 5 gauge pod plate and because of the curve of the glass of the gauges, it's actually hard to see them in full day light. I found a dude on etsy who I'm working with to custom develop a similar version of that unit, but with angled gauge pods so that the curve of the glass is taken out of the equation.

Anyhow, outside of those minor grips, the guages work as expected and other than getting through the firewall were incredibly easy to install. The parts seem very high quality considering the cost is low and the ability to daisy chain them for power is amazing.