I am looking for some guages to install but i dont know which ones. As of now, i am a newb about FI. I am not sure whether i should get digital guages or the needle guages. Can anyone tell me which one is cheaper? I looked in the marketplace and there seem to be a lot of guages available. Ive been looking at the defi guages in amber to match the interior of the G. Which ones are neccesary in an FI G? I know i need boost and oil temp, but i dont know what else. Which guages are vital? help!

 

Wideband air fuel gauge should be mandatory
Boost
EGT if you can understand what its telling you
Fuel/oil pressure/temp if you want

 

Boost and fuel pressure are the must have's. Oil pressure is next.

If you are self tuning - wideband, otherwise your probably good.

If you have room in your installation location - get mechanical gauges - otherwise if space is tight, get the electronic gauges. I personally like the needle gauges - AutoMeter Nexus rocks!

Rick

 

like rookie said, the boost and a True Wideband gauge (such as the Innovate Motorsports set up http://www.innovatemotorsports.com/products.php , or depending upon which Engine Management you have, the companies have wideband kits for their particular setup),

after those two, I would go with Oil Temp, then Oil Pressure and/or Water Temp and/or Fuel Pressure(you could use a mechanical guage in the engine compartment for tuning) and/or EGT. Having an EGT is kinda an older idea from a time when the good Wideband A/F gauges were not readily available and much more expensive than they are now.
So I would put the Oil Temp gauge as a more important than EGT (you need to know the Actual ~temperature your engine's running at), behind the obvious Boost guage and Wideband A/F guage.

 

I'll get flack for this but I drove my G for 17,500 miles with a properly tuned Vortech and never had one gauge...the new owner still hasn't installed any and the tunes been checked twice and hasn't changed. The reality is, by the time you see your AF go to 16:1, you've already detinated your motor. If anything, I'd say Fuel Pressure and Oil Pressure since they are tapped during installation.

Let the flaming begin...oh, the irony...flaming a firefighter

 

With a supercharger, the need for gauges isn't as great as a turbo. I can't believe you haven't installed guages on your turbo yet. So many things can go wrong, like overboosting.

 

for a supercharger, IMO the order from most important to least important are:

A/F - if A/F is off, you could be hurting your engine and you'd never know

boost - to verify that there's no leaks, or that something isn't working right

fuel pressure - if your fuel pressure becomes low under boost, your engine will soon be toast

oil pressure - if you can't see that you're possibly low on oil, you're screwed. Also helps indicate how hot the oil is

oil temp - helps you to know how your your engine actually is. If it starts getting a bit too hot, you know you should probably take it easy for a bit

coolant temp - stock coolant temp gauge is worthless really, more like an on/off gauge and not very accurate. More important on a water cooled turbo kit like APS, but gives you another indication of how hot the engine is

EGT - gives you an idea of how hard your engine is working, and to some degree what your A/F is. Not super useful in practice though if you have oil temp and A/F gauges. I think of it mostly as a short term engine temp gauge

 

I am only installing 2 gauges;

One for Engine: Wideband A/F
One for Transmission: Temp. Gauge

 

Oil
Boost
A/F

 

Wideband AFR
Boost
Fuel Pressure
Oil Pressure

 

^ Who makes that gauge pod?

 

I have Zeitronix with A/F, Boost, and EGT. I added a fuel pressure gauge later. I figured I would have a problem with fuel before oil. If I were to add another, it'll be oil pressure.

 

I ahve to disagree with you on this one. A:F gauge don't tell you anything about what is really going on in the chamber. they only tell you what the mixture ratio is. The EGT lets you know if you are running too much timing, too little timing, etc. You can have a "safe" A:F, but if your EGTs are skyrocketting due to timing issues (or other things), you are still going to melt the pistons!

I think it's a good idea to have bothe EGT and A:F gauges.

 

+1 I have actually went back to my tuner for him to advance timing based on my EGTs. When he advanced timing the EGTs went down.

 

I always thought it is important to have a A/F gauge because if you don't have a temperature based ECU (like the FCon), your A/F is most likely to change during temperature or season changes. Also, I think boost gauge is very important. Those two are my priorities but I would love to have a fuel pressure and EGT.