Just looking for some inspiration, trying to figure out a clean and visible way to situated my gauges. If you got pics please post them ...
It's going into a Mazda FC RX7...
Boost Gauge 60mm Oil Pressure 60mm Water Temp 60mm WB O2 Gauge 52mm :( boo for non-uniformity)
Suggestions welcomed too... :)
A pillar gauge pod? Probably difficult to use for 4 gauges. any room in the center console area?
This does not look silly at all.
Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: This does not look silly at all.
That's actually VERY awesome, but wouldn't be quite line-of-sight enough for me.
Why don't you post a photo of your dashboard for reference. It will help those of us not familiar with the layout of an RX-7.
Take a look at the center cluster of this car:
He made a custom faceplate to move the stereo further down and installed the gauges where the stereo used to be. Depending on whether or not you plan to keep a stereo in your car, you can take up the whole space with gauges. I have also seen the A/C controls moved down the center stack and the upper vents blanked out and replaced with gauges. If you plan on adding more gauges, then there may be a point where you won't be able to avoid making your interior cluttered like this guy's car.
Well this is was the RX7 interior looks like:
I was thinking about using something like this:
But it might be attracting too much attention
Then there are these universal ones:
Just looking for something that doesn't involve getting rid of the dummy lines or putting them in the DIN where I hardly look....
Thoughts...
In reply to RexSeven:
Ohhhh..... I like....
Put the boost gauge in the glovebox with a long length of vacuum line on it. It's only there for your entertainment or for initial setup, you can pull it out when you need it. That's what I do on my turbo Miata.
You've already got several of those gauges in the stock cluster - water temp for sure and probably oil pressure. Why not disassemble the cluster and replace the factory gauges? A coworker of mine did that with an Autometer gauge in place of his factory oil pressure a while back. If there's another gauge that's not much use (or a clock), replace it with the O2 gauge.
I can't tell if he's being sarcastic or not. 
No, that all sounds perfectly reasonable.
Or, could you mount something in that storage compartment next to the cigarette lighter?
That is all seriousness there.
The 'tray' above the center hvac vents looks like a decent mounting place too. Just the right height, and it looks easily removed and modified to house the gauges.
I like as little eye adjustment as possible so I put my gauges against the windshield straight in front of me, that way it's road, glance at the gauges, and back at the road without really having to look away.
Search for "DIN pod" on e-bay. $20 gets you a 3-gauge holder that mounts in 1/2 of your radio spot and leaves you enough room for a regular radio instead of that double-height jobbie.
Nope, not sarcastic. Once you've tuned the car, all a boost gauge can tell you is that something's gone wrong with your boost control - and you can feel that. Otherwise, it's just for show. You shouldn't be watching that gauge at full boost anyhow! As for the others, if you're duplicating gauges already in the car, it only makes sense to use the same spots.
Now, suggesting you duplicate this would be sarcastic! One of our cars during development of a new product. Note that four of those gauges are dual-display, so there are 9 extra readings. And of course, a laptop datalogging what the computer is doing.
I like the custom gauge pod 
That's real fibre, baby!
Keith wrote: Now, suggesting you duplicate this would be sarcastic! One of our cars during development of a new product. Note that four of those gauges are dual-display, so there are 9 extra readings. And of course, a laptop datalogging what the computer is doing.
Uh, yea....
Going on the tangent, I've seen some scary gage set ups by some contract companies. I never knew why people want to stare at gages when they have a perfectly good computer to record the data real time.
(then again, you can take that to a frightening extreme- like +300 things monitored over a 12 min test for a grand total of 27Mb file)
In general - gauges have no place in a race car either except to do forensics on a cool-down.
The best thing to have is idiot lights with configurable thresholds for pressure, temps, etc... so at 11/10ths you see red light shining in your periphery - back off and then look at the gauges to see what is going on. Anything else is just data to process that steals from your focus. Same exact principle as a shift light in drag racing. In most cases - you won't be looking at the gauge when the oil pressure drops and at 7k rpms... the motor is toast in 3 heartbeats anyway.
I have a video of an engine dying just like that - a driver and a passenger circulating around the track talking about the best line to take as the gauges show the engine gradually failing. After swapping that engine out in the pits, I threatened to convert the oil pressure switch to run the ignition signal through a pair of alligator clips that attached to the driver's testicles when there was a problem.
I run oil pressure warning lights on my cars, sometimes in conjunction with a gauge.
Of course, street cars are a different thing. A full datalogging system is expensive (the computer in that multi-gauge Miata couldn't take any extra inputs, thus the gauges) and can only tell you what happened, not what's happening.
I just use them mainly for the first week or so after a change to make sure that the car isn't going to spontaneously combust for comfort's sake.
Then i ignore them until the next change. (Well, i always use the wideband.)
But really, i just have gauges for street cred, y0.
Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: In general - gauges have no place in a race car either except to do forensics on a cool-down. The best thing to have is idiot lights with configurable thresholds for pressure, temps, etc... so at 11/10ths you see red light shining in your periphery - back off and then look at the gauges to see what is going on. Anything else is just data to process that steals from your focus. Same exact principle as a shift light in drag racing. In most cases - you won't be looking at the gauge when the oil pressure drops and at 7k rpms... the motor is toast in 3 heartbeats anyway.
I'm very happy with the Autometer Elite series gauges because they do both. User settable warning and alarm points with discreet outputs if you want to shut something down on alarm. Also a resettable peak memory if you want to confirm your high temp or whatever during a session. The backlighting is super bright, strobes red in warning and goes steady red in alarm. The whole gauge face is the idiot light, with some brains to back it up.
http://www.jegs.com/p/Auto-Meter/Auto-Meter-Elite-Series-Gauges/1170558/10002/-1
Dashpot wrote: I'm very happy with the Autometer Elite series gauges because they do both. User settable warning and alarm points with discreet outputs if you want to shut something down on alarm. Also a resettable peak memory if you want to confirm your high temp or whatever during a session. The backlighting is super bright, strobes red in warning and goes steady red in alarm. The whole gauge face is the idiot light, with some brains to back it up. http://www.jegs.com/p/Auto-Meter/Auto-Meter-Elite-Series-Gauges/1170558/10002/-1
I really like everything about those except the cost. Hard to justify $1000 worth of gauges to anyone but somebody with Autometer as a sponsor. It would be nice if they made them share a brain so that you hook all your senders and gauges up to "the box" just like a data logger. That is what I ended up doing - using an AVR programmable logic controller to drive LEDs triggered on thresholds set on the analog inputs from my senders. Obviously, not a DIY for everyone but it was really inexpensive. I used a plan for a shift light and expanded on it. I ought to put together a how-to one of these days.
Keith wrote: Of course, street cars are a different thing. A full datalogging system is expensive (the computer in that multi-gauge Miata couldn't take any extra inputs, thus the gauges) and can only tell you what happened, not what's happening.
So you can see, and interpret 6 things at once, and still drive?
Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: I ought to put together a how-to one of these days.
Yes, yes you should.
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