Electric Oil Pressure Gauges

[Guido]

Are they as accurate as their mechanical counterparts? Reason being is that engineer's generally frown upon oil lines running in the cabin and there is no way in hell I will ever have bonnet mounted gauges.

I am looking at the 2" Speco 1-100PSI gauge in particular. Obviously I do not want to fork out for a gauge if it is not going to be accurate.

What are your thought's??

[Glenno]

Guido
Electric senders and guages are going to be far more accurate than their mechanical counterparts.

[matt b]

Why is that GlennOfDem? I ask because I am wondering how accurate my mechanical water temp gauge is.
Thanks Matt b

[jmac]

I can only speak from experience here.

One of the few guages that actually worked well (even after 20 years) on a mini was the oil pressure guage. They were capillary type. fwiw, I've never had a problem with an electrical sender/oil pressure guage on any of the ones.

On the other hand I've never seen a 'mechanical' temp guage that was even close to accurate. The way the mech temp gauge works vs how a mech oil pressure guage works is dramatically different, so the two aren't likely worth drawing comparisons with one another.

Possibly there's one thing an electrical sender/oil pressure guage has over the capillary type - it's much less likely to leak, and if the other type does, it can be a pain if it goes to the inside of the car (or worse, possibly on the windscreen on cowling mounted gauges.)

My personal favourite idea is to run a t piece at the sender location on the block, and to run both a variable sender (for the guage itself) and another on/off sender that's set to turn on a big warning light (possibly piezzo buzzer as well) if it drops below 25psi (vs 7-10psi typical of most idiot light senders) oil pressure. If I had to only have one, I'd run the light, simply because it's practically impossible to miss, whereas sometimes it's easy to get busy and not keep a close enough eye on the oil pressure.

The guage itself is damn handy if you are attentive enough, since something like the oil pressure dropping off (from what you'd come to expect from daily driving) you can get a very early warning of something going amiss.

John McKenzie

[Guido]

Thanks for that all. Looks like a 2" Speco electric gauge will be the go.