Gauges with warning function?
 

What does everyone run? I never have much time to look at gauges when I'm out on the track deflating egos of those with more expensive cars.

I'm after something that can activate a light and/or buzzer and has an electric sender (no mechanical shiz, not keen on hot oil lines in cabin).

Cheers

Prosport makes great defi knockoffs. electrical with light and buzzer functions.

though I don't think most here will see a tiny little led on a gauge light up or a little beep when they're on track focusing on not killing themselves.

That's OK - I'd be prepared to rip one apart and extend the wiring out to a crazy bright LED on the cluster.

Buy this.

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...Ti75jSAlCjsGWK

Fraking LOVE mine. So nice to have on the track. Oil/water temp, oil press, boost, rpm, speed, lap timer, shift lights, warnings custom settable with BRIGHT red lights + more.

I have liked my 10mm LED shift-light aimed at my eyes through reflection in the windscreen.
Call it HUD if you want but the main point is that it's right in my face when looking straight forward, no need to peek through the wheel to see the tacho.

Oil light and coolant pressure light will be the next ones to be placed there (on the right edge of the instrument cluster cover, aimed by bending the legs of the LED).

In bright sunlight it could have been a little brighter (just choose resistor to your liking) but then it would have been blinding in darker situations (it should be information, not a distraction).

I've got a dual oil & water temp gauge from SPA. You can customize the alarm set points and it has outputs for external warning devices.

Whatever gauge you get, check the current limits for the warning device outputs because they probably aren't more than 100-200 mA. You're probably okay with running LEDs directly but loud buzzers or incandescent bulbs will probably require a relay.

DEFi.

I have DEFi in my STi they are quite nice but spendy
I have Prosports in the Miata not quite as nice but cheaper
I think STRI have warning lights but I don't know how good they are

The PLX MFD LCD gauges are cool and have configurable warnings I think but they can get spendy with the sensor modules. Someone on here has a PLX set up Faeflora(?)

I could program my MS to make my door ajar buzzer go off under certain conditions.

For low oil pressure, I run an LED in the pillar and an oil pressure switch out of the Borg Warner book. Its a 10psi switch. Its fairly blinding and grabs your attention.

Total cost- 10 dollars.

Great thought on the door buzzer Brain. I can program my ECU to blink the check engine light under certain conditions, knock is what I'll be monitoring when I get around to it.

Any info on this?

I have AEM digital gauges...I fucking hate them.

According to my diagrams the door switches are switched grounds on a red/white wire in my 94. You could splice into that wire and run it to one of your spare ports on the MS and have it triggered to ground whenever your warning conditions are met.

Buzzers can be annoying though. Older RX-7s have a buzzer that goes off at redline to remind you to shift. It's only on for a split second at a time and I still find it mildly annoying. If your oil temp goes high, that buzzer could be pissing you off for a while before it cools back down. You can set the hysteresis of the warning parameter to a low value so it turns off quickly, but I don't know off the top of my head if you can set the port to shut off after x amount of time.

This would be the settings on the "outputs" section in tunerstudio? It has an option for CLT, TPS, etc etc. Sorry for the questions, I didn't even know MS could do this. :facepalm:

This seems easier than buying gauges with a warning function. I looked at some prices for the gauges mentioned in this thread and they aren't as cheap as I thought.

Thats exactly why it'll work. I'd rather have to deal with 5 minutes of buzzing than hours in the shop fixing stuff.

A well-placed light will get my attention just as well as a buzzer, without grating on my nerves.



Sounds about right, though I never messed with tunerstudio when I had MS1. You should have a couple unused outputs that can be triggered by any of the selectable parameters.

Of course, for MS to trigger an alarm for it, you have to have a signal going to MS in the first place. CLT and RPM are no problem but most people probably don't have their oil temp sensors hooked up to their MS. Not sure what else would be important enough for a buzzer.

On MS2/3 you can configure the outputs so that multiple parameters must be met, so you could make the buzzer only buzz when MAP is above 240 kPa and AFR is above 15:1. :D

Autometer "Elite" series gauges.

Electric with "full sweep" movement.
LED illumination.
Full-face warnings (the entire illumination of the gauge changes colors).
Several different colors to choose from.
Typical setup:
Over-Low warning: Flashing Green
Low warning: Green
Normal: White
High warning: Red
Over-High warning: Flashing red
"Pro Control" Activate solenoid when a set point is reached (ie: turn on fan at 190°F). Has two outputs one high (12v), one low (ground).
Data acquisition (0-5 volt) output for data loggers.

Not cheap. $150-230 depending on the gauge.

I like them high on the dash. Anything below the steering wheel or eyeball vents is useless on-track.

For $230 per, there are a whole lot nicer gauges on the market. It doesn't take very many of those to make a data logging dash viable.


And Dave Coleman published a study in Sport Compact Car years ago about ergonomic gauge placement, and had a lot of very good reasons to mount your gauges as far away from you as possible on the far side of the dash board, all on the same focal plane. It takes much more time to focus on several focal planes and look back at the track than it does to process the data on all those focal planes.

Why ?
I just bought 3 of those