1 Auxiliary Gauge?

[greisinb]

I have a roadster with 200k miles and the m44 engine. At some point in the nearish future I’ll be removing the center console to do some maintenance on the switches and this got me thinking. I don’t really need an analog clock, I should replace it with some sort of aftermarket gauge which leads me to the question: What gauge should I consider putting in that place? Do you have any suggestion for what would be the most useful singular aftermarket gauge? Let me know!

 

[Rudyrov]

Oil pressure

 

[Pond]

Turbo pressure? Only kidding.

Oil temp. That is the important engine gauge IMO.
I have many gauges in my M54 and the oil temp doesn't move (starts at 50c) until miles after the coolant is up to full temp. If you don't know, it's easy to rev the engine with pretty cold oil, which is never gonna do it any good.

Don't know about the M44 engine, but whatever gauge you fit you will probably need a new sensor to run it.

 

[greisinb]

Turbo pressure? Only kidding.

I had actually been thinking about a manifold pressure (well, vacuum) gauge.

 

[ExMX5owner]

I thought about this myself, you can get gauges that do more than one thing. Probably the way I would go..

 

[shera25]

I have a roadster with 200k miles and the m44 engine. At some point in the nearish future I’ll be removing the center console to do some maintenance on the switches and this got me thinking. I don’t really need an analog clock, I should replace it with some sort of aftermarket gauge which leads me to the question: What gauge should I consider putting in that place? Do you have any suggestion for what would be the most useful singular aftermarket gauge? Let me know!

Sounds like a fun little project If you’re going to replace the clock with one useful gauge, it depends what you care about most.
A wideband AFR gauge is really handy if you’re doing any tuning or want to keep an eye on mixture. Otherwise, a boost/vacuum gauge (even on a NA car) is great for spotting intake issues, and an oil pressure gauge is reassuring on an older engine.
Pick the one you’d find most useful day-to-day all of those are good options!

 

[colb]

Fitted a oil pressure guage to my 1.9 old post here for details https://www.zroadster.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=37830&p=351353&hilit=oil+pressure+guage#p351353

 

[Delk]

I have multiple gauges in my turbo car. For day to day oil pressure is probably the nicest as it just gives piece of mind. AEM X series are very shallow and easy to use. The oil pressure gauge can be set with a flashing warning for low pressure as a bonus.

When driven in any spirited fashion they dont get looked at.
Boost gauge. Very handy for my turbo car.
Wideband AFR. Once the car has been tuned its interesting to look at but not much of a requirement.
Oil pressure. As mentioned above. I did find that my hot oil pressure was a little lower then I wanted so added a cooler with thermostat.
Seperatly I have fuel and oil pressure sensors that feed into the ECU. They can be monitored with a laptop only. I needed the fuel pressure for tuning but I dont need it day to day.

 

[Delk]

I am not done modifying my panel. It's a project for a later date. Need to get some blanking plates as I don't have heated seats or traction control any longer.

I love the AEM gauges and it's always fun to see the peak boost pressure after a trip out.