Most Important Gauges for Turbo?
 

I've got a turbo setup. Initially only had a Boost Gauge as that is a very basic requirement and am going to be getting more gauges. I have an AFR gauge ready to put in and spots for 2 additional gauges. So what should I fill those 2 spots with?

I was thinking important ones might be water temp, oil temp, and oil pressure. So which 2 are the best to have? And if there is another gauge I don't know about that is important too, do tell. Personally, I was thinking the 2 oil gauges, but I'd like to hear some opinions.

go for water and oil temp . Even though the stock press guage is only an on/off switch it does tell you that there is oil pressure which is the main thing you want to know .

you can get water from odb2. skip it.

you can get boost from boost controller too, so if it's in a viewable position you can also skip that.

I'd get AFR as #1. Then maybe fuel pressure, oil pressure, and EGT in that order.

I personally did boost + afr.

Agree - if you have accessport you could display it with that

exactly what I'm doing - think it was at your suggestion from a while back

for FI, oil pressure is quite important. (pressure or no pressure is not good enough)
EGT is recommended
Fuel Pressure especially important if you have a certain upgraded fuel pump. (okay, low blow, sorry...)

I recently bought a cool cell phone holder contraption for my AccessPort that clips onto the front A/C vents. Get something like that and you've got the Water Temps taken care of

EGT is what? Exhaust Gas Temp?

yes... egt and afr can go hand in hand, so you can skip one if you have the other, but if you have spaces available, egt is useful.

EGT and fuel pressure

Already have boost gauge and AFR, 2 more spots. Someone said EGT not really needed if AFR is taken care of. Fuel Pressure I had not considered, what will that give me advance warning of? It's interesting, I was expecting more people to say oil temp/pressure is more important.

you need to make sure fuel and oil are working properly, so those are nice to have.

oil temp is usually hand in hand with water temp - both are used to cool the engine. water goes into the turbo too. and like I said, odb2 shows it... not just accessport but scangauge2 too (4 gauges displayed at once).

I have a scangauge2 so I can monitor water, but my turbo kit actually is not water cooled, only oil. So would that make oil temp a definite one to get, because water may not me giving a full picture of my temperature situation?

So then perhaps oil temp and fuel pressure are what I'll add.

if you're using the greddy turbo - the oil flow to it is so low that I don't think it's going to matter. I'd worry more about oil pressure then temp if you're able to watch coolant temp.

There isn't a wrong answer for gauges. In an ideal world you'd have a dashboard of 50 gauges and monitor everything. In reality you need to go over issues others have experienced, and decide what is the most critical things to watch.

It's the esmeril turbo, I have no idea how much the flow compares to the greddy, but it's a fairly large turbo, has a built in oil restrictor to give it the right amount, front mounted so the drainage should be good (i heard the greddy has drainage problems with the short run to the oil pan).

So you think oil pressure and fuel pressure then are the way to go?

And thanks for the feedback mysql, I appreciate your input.

edit: I think I'll PM Chris and see what he thinks. It's his kit, so I bet he'd have an idea of the potential problem areas.

The greddy turbo issue isn't the return line. The GReddy's problem is two fold.

1. It is oil cooled. So if you restrict the oil flow, you decrease it's cooling capacity. Not enough cooling and you damage stuff.

2. It is oil cooled, so if you don't restrict the oil flow, there is too much pressure and the journal bearings eventually die and the turbo smokes.

So ... either way you're screwed with it.

Hmm... I wonder if that's gonna be a problem for this kit then.

there must be a way to minimise the issue ......

if you can figure it out, you'll be the first. My turbo was rebuilt twice before I chucked it for the MM upgrade.

I thought I had it figured out - oil restrictor to prevent the seals from dying, and make sure the turbo is cooled down by easy driving the last 5-10 minutes of a trip. It lasted about 10k miles before it smoked.

The Greddy is the same turbo used on subarus and mitsis isn't it - what do they do ?

according to this thread, skyline and Z:

https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-major-horsepower-upgrades-93/greddy-t618z-51118/

interesting read - cheers for that .
Just thinking about it i wonder if the issue is as much to do with the drain as anything else . If oil backs up in the drain it is going to pressurise the bearings

i thought thats what I heard, poor drainage from it being a short horizontal distance swamped the turbo in oil without a restrictor, but I'm no expert.

yep.

and to much oil before is bad.. you know where the info is..

beers :beer:

a regular old autometer style EGT gauge is semi-useless. It responds too slowly and it maxes out at only 1600 degrees.

Most EGT gauges are slow to react and pretty useless. And unless you know how to interpret the information it's also, useless. Unless you're doing tuning I wouldn't worry about an EGT gauge.

Since you already gave boost and AFR, get oil temp and oil pressure. Water temp can be viewed on the AP.