Gauge Trick If Anyone Is Interested

[Slater]

I have used this with success on previous cars and will be doing the same thing to my T-5R. I thought I would share it with you all.

What you do is get the ELECTRIC temp gauge or your choice, and multiple sensors of the same range. Then you wire the sensors up to a SPDT switch, and hook that up to the sensor input on the gauge. This allows you to use 1 gauge to monitor multiple sources, say water and oil temperature. Or water and tranny temperature. You can also get a 3-way switch and do water, oil, and tranny.

With sensors being cheap, this offers substantial cost savings and space savings. You can afford to buy 1 nice quality gauge like an apexi or defi unit and 2 senders for $20-$30 each and have the equivilent of $500 in gauges for less than $200.

Likewise, this works for ANY electric gauge - pressure included. Although I don't know what pressures besides oil you would want to monitor that cover the same range - fuel scales are much lower than oil.

Also, if you want to get fancy, you can make a little circuit that includes LEDs that indicate which gauge you are on. You can also build a small timer circuit that cycles through the gauges every x seconds using relays (for example, water temp for 5 seconds, oil temp for 5 seconds, tranny temp for 5 seconds, then back to water temp).

Also, this should also work for the STOCK temp sensor, as sensors are dumb and don't care what they are monitoring. You would just get another stock water temp sensor and wire it up like described above. Now your stock water temp gauge can be used for AT temp with the flip of a switch!

- Slater

[SubCrash]

Was thinking of doing this myself. Did that one day at school when i had to build a test stand for a engine and ran EGT to one guage. Good post good idea.

[styx0r]

I second that. Good ideas. I like it.