Which gauge is more important - oil pressure or temp?

Stevehose

Stevehose

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If you had to choose one oil gauge for a street car, which would it be - oil pressure or oil temperature? Bonus question: for battery/alternator health - volt or amp meter?
 
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Oil pressure is infinitely more important than oil temperature, even on a race car. Having hot oil is not good, but having no oil is even not gooder. As for battery/alternator health, I'm not sure it matters.

The tricky part about getting oil temperature on an M30 is that there's no easy place to put the sender. The bottom bolt oil cannister mounts have a nice boss for one, but the top bolt mounts do not. I downgraded to the bottom bolt style cannister in order to install a temperature sensor. I also have an oil pressure gauge in the binnacle that I designed and which resides in the dash where the speaker grill used to be.

Stevehose said:
If you had to choose one oil gauge for a street car, which would it be - oil pressure or oil temperature? Bonus question: for battery/alternator health - volt or amp meter?
Click to expand...


-tj in Los Gatos
 
Would a 5 bar gauge suffice? From what I have read the m30 has more oil volume than pressure? Or 10 bar? I am considering a stealth install of 2 lucky gauges behind my speaker grill, covered with the stock grill if desired or off for road trips. It seems the volt meter is the way to go, with less current running to the gauge. Thanks.
 
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5 bar.

North Hollwood does conversions to your exisiting for the real stealth look.

Volts.
 
Slightly less psi; but yes. You'll be able to see the guage move more easily.

I would think about one of the Alpina type alternates that Oranger does on the speaker plates.
 
big-bang.jpg

..........I burst with pride..........​
 
corsachili said:
Oil pressure is infinitely more important than oil temperature, even on a race car. Having hot oil is not good, but having no oil is even not gooder. As for battery/alternator health, I'm not sure it matters.
Click to expand...

I agree entirely. My '66 Alfa came from the factory with both oil temp and water temp gauges. At least for street use, the two tend to move in lockstep: if you know the water temp, you also know the oil temp. No doubt things change faster on a race car, but for a street car with an accurate water temp gauge, an oil temp gauge wouldn't provide additional information.

Yea, voltmeter ampmeter anteater, who cares? Put your energy into getting a modern, internally-regulated alternator. With one of those, the idiot light is good enough - as long as the belt is intact, you can be confident it's doing the right thing. Electrical gauges made sense back in the dark ages (literally!) when generators had brushes and mechanical regulators had points.

(I'll bet someone is going to disagree!)
 
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not disagree but...

an issue about electrical checkings

there is a good reason to avoid an ampmeter, the thickness of the cables !

i will install a voltmeter

regards
 
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