boost, egt, and oil pressure are the most common ones.

 

what Jim said or fuel pressure instead of oil pressure.

get boost & EGT for sure though

 

I personally would run boost, EGT, and fuel pressure. Anything beyond that, I'd get oil temp, water temp, and oil pressure in that order.

 

Hey Kevin. Can you give your reasons for which gauges you think are the most important. I've always wondered which ones were more important than others and why. I understand that you would want to monitor for things like boost creep and proper A/F mixtures but that's it. Enlighten me Thx.

 

Boost is the most important because you absolutley need to know your boost levels when tuning, and because it's very easy to overboost. You want to know if that's happening.

EGTs are probably the most important tuning tool, and the first thing to indicate that something's wrong. High EGTs are the fastest way to inducing detonation or worse, pre-ignition. Many tuners use a target EGT to set fuel and timing maps after establishing the boost curve.

Those two are pretty universally accepted as the first 2 gauges you need.

Many people will say oil pressure is next, but I disagree. If you suddenly see a drop in oil pressure, guess what- you're screwed. If you see it drop, and pull over or whatever and stop anything from blowing up, you still need to rebuild your motor to fix whatever's wrong. Kind of pointless in my eyes, mostly because the one I recommend, the fuel pressure gauge, can save your motor by showing low fuel pressure.

If you have fuel pressure, and you have a somewhat aggressive tune, and you catch your low fuel pressure before the obvious failure of your engine, you can usually save yourself much aggravation (and money) by replacing your fuel pump before you develop det from lean A/F mixtures.

So those are the 3 I'd get in one of the frequent vendor specials that get posted ($xxx dollars for your choice of whatever gauges). If you go with more than 3, I'd start with oil temp after that.

Your Subaru already has a water temp gauge (no numbers, but you probably know where "normal" is anyway). Oil temp is a bit more useful because it can spike more quickly than water temp, plus a growing difference between oil and water temp can indicate your cooling system is not efficient enough.

I suppose because we already have water temp gauges, you could easily argue that oil pressure is more important than water temp, but heck, who's gonna run 5 gauges but draw the line at 6? Chances are if you have that many, you pretty much have every gauge you can get in the style of your choice.

 

exellent. Thx. My old camry overheated twice. The first time killing the engine. I learned my lesson. Even though my car runs well most of the time, I never turn my back on the wt gauge.

 

The longer I have had a turbo car and tuned it the less I like having analog gauges that move quickly - i.e. an analog boost gauge. I just find it super annoying, especially when driving. EGT, oil pressure, are much easier to watch.

What I have done was to get rid of my turbo timer that based its timing on RPM and get the Blitz timer that bases cool down time on boost. I find the digital reaoutd much easier to watch and it has peak boost hold - my favorite feature. I don't really look at it like I bought a turbo timer, heh. Its more like I got a sweet digital boost gauge with peak hold that has turbo timer features

Eventually I am going to get all new gauges and I will no longer have an analog boost gauge. I will probably get EGT and oil temp (instead of pressure) and fuel pressure. I would rank fuel pressure up there in the need-to-know safety level with EGTs.

jason

 

Sounds like an EcuTek SECCS display or Defi Display unit would be right up your alley Jason.

 

Like this one?

http://mastrowrx.com/index.asp?PageA...ROD&ProdID=264

HAAWWWT!

 

Nice... and pricey. If I get gauges again, I'm going cheap(re). I'm not racing for an hour at a time at Sebring, heh. Actually, I like the analog guages, don't get me wrong. I don't need everything to be digital. Its the fast moving analog guages that I find useless.... although I suppse FPR is almost as unstable as boost :-/

jason

 

Actually I priced this out. For an equivalent set of DEFI gauges and their installation (I could do boost and EGT, but I wouldn't trust myself with some of the other installs) it would run just under $1,000. By that mark the SECCS is actually quite a bargain, and it is digital (not analog) to boot -- much easier to read than a vibrating needle.

 

Heh, I'm talking like autometer level of quality for my next gauges. That wold be like $300

Have I mentioned lately that Omori is crap?

jason