What Gauges Should I Add?

Ghostultramarine

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I've seen lots of photos with one or two extra gauges added under the dash.

What are the gauges one should add?

(I'm leaving this "open-ended" to get, potentially, the best possible responses and not skew the advice.)
 
Being a 68 Newport a temp guage,voltmeter,and oil pressure will be suffice in lace of the idiot lights.
Me? I use a laser temp gun kept under my seat,and roll with it,LOL!!
 
Those are the three I was thinking of.

I have to admit I LOVE the "cold" idiot light. It reminds me to let the car warm up - I wish new cars had such lights (but then they probably would not have as many repairs).
 
Those are the three I was thinking of.

I have to admit I LOVE the "cold" idiot light. It reminds me to let the car warm up - I wish new cars had such lights (but then they probably would not have as many repairs).
Some of them do . . . I'm not a big fan of Honda, but my Dad's 2012 Civic does have a little "Cold" icon that lights up in the dash cluster. But it's the only one of my modern cars that has it . . .
 

I have only one vehicle where I added two gauges and that was in my 65 F100. The temp gauge is actually worthless as it reads 25 degrees higher than the thermometer placed inside the radiator opening as coolant flows by. The other gauge is a vacuum gauge as I like vacuum gauges when tuning and checking on how an engine is running.
 
Those are the three I was thinking of.

I have to admit I LOVE the "cold" idiot light. It reminds me to let the car warm up - I wish new cars had such lights (but then they probably would not have as many repairs).
The big-block water pump housing has a small pipe plug which is 1/8NPT thread. Modern electric-style temp gauges have sensors that will fit in that port, so you can retain the original sensor for the idiot light, which is screwed into the larger port on the housing. If you're lucky the pipe plug will come out ok. If it's rusted in place you'll probably need to remove the water pump housing and use some heat to get it out.

To answer the original question, I install oil pressure, coolant temp and voltmeter in my Chryslers. Get the 2" ones, not the smaller 1.5" diameter ones. I put the smaller ones in one of my cars so they would be unobtrusive, but they are not very accurate. All the ones in that size seem to be from off-brand labels, so I wouldn't trust them to be accurate.
 
I run an oil pressure gauge and tachometer. The factory temperature gauge seems accurate enough, and the ammeter has been bypassed so it's not all that accurate.
If you don't have a temp gauge I suppose I would add one.
 
I run a voltmeter, oil psi, water temp, and vacuum gauges. I prefer electric gauges. I may in the future exchange the vacuum for a dual wide band egt gauge. If you are interested in a panel for 4 gauges Speedway Motors carries them.
Speedway Universal 4 Gauge Dash Panel, Brushed
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When my new engine is finally installed I will most likely install this instead of the Vacuum gauge. It is also a 2 1/16 inch. That way I can be more sure of the tune.

Innovate Motorsports DLG-1 Dual Lambda Air Fuel Ratio AFR Wideband O2 Gauge 3891 | eBay



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I have a WBO2 sensor and gauge which I was going to install in one of my Chryslers. But then I figured that, with a carb, you should only really need to tune it once, then check it occasionally. After you figure out the jet settings and opening rate of the secondaries, it shouldn't change much. It's not like an EFI car which tunes itself continuously as you drive.

At that point, I figured a better thing to do would be to install an O2 sensor in the exhaust of each of my Chryslers and put the gauge in a self-contained box with a cigarette-lighter plug, to make it portable to switch between cars.

But of course I haven't gotten around to doing any of that yet. :p
 
Well that's a good idea for sure. Any products you know of that are easily portable from one car to the next? Or do you just build one?
 
Well that's a good idea for sure. Any products you know of that are easily portable from one car to the next? Or do you just build one?
My plan is to build one. I already bought the 2-1/16 gauge with O2 sensor. I need to find a project box to mount it in. I was hoping to find a vintage piece of test equipment or an old battery charger (broken would be ok) at a swapmeet, remove the old guts, and fit the WBO2 gauge into it. But 1) I have too many projects, and 2) no swapmeets happened for the past year and a half.
 
When my new engine is finally installed I will most likely install this instead of the Vacuum gauge. It is also a 2 1/16 inch. That way I can be more sure of the tune.

FYI, if you need more room triple gauges fit perfectly in place of the glove box on a 69 plus provide lighting and power.
 
I've seen lots of photos with one or two extra gauges added under the dash.

What are the gauges one should add?

(I'm leaving this "open-ended" to get, potentially, the best possible responses and not skew the advice.)

I'm using these two Autometer Gauges:

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Since this photo was taken, I moved the gauges down low at the edge of the lip of the dash.
 
I use a Stewart Warner mechanical oil pressure gauge, Clark Brothers (truck gauge company, U.S.) coolant temp and voltage gauges, and a nice Autometer fuel gauge. I added an old SW tachometer and small vacuum gauge too. During the summer especially, I've learned to value reliable data on the state of my engine! I have an oil temp gauge, also vintage Stewart Warner I want to install when I can find the proper electric sensor for it. Only the fuel gauge is less than 25 yrs old. The SW stuff is more like 40, and works beautifully.
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