Yaris, Scion xD, Honda Fit - no water temp gauge

I've got one in my Jeep. I set my steering wheel height so that I just do
not see it at all.
Tomes

 

Hell... My ol' '83 Civic FE has a shift light that is controlled by
tach speeds. I find it to be generally annoying..

JT

 

Oh, you mean a REAL shift light that is clearly visible without looking
down, looks like an old flashlight, has a cover for when you're not
racing... not the dumb little up-arrow on the dashboard that comes on
whenever Toyota thinks you should be using less fuel.

OR just didn't understand the kind of light you meant.

 

No, it's a symptom of how appliance-like the cars have become--which
depends on, and also feeds, the fact that auto transportation has become
a necessity--not a hobby, not a luxury.[/QUOTE]

Really? The media keep telling us just how unnecessary it is. Live in a

Cars were already appliance-like in 1940, but they still had real
instrumentation. And appliances can be either versatile equipment with a
good operator interface, or cheap crap from Target too.

I

But it damn sure helps if you have a clue. It lets you do more, do it
better, and be more productive than the appliance-user. And knowledge
prevents you from being dependent on a sysadmin somewhere.

Fortunately there are still plenty of cars for people who ENJOY cars
out there.

 

True. But the probability of your $900 fridge being a cheap piece of
Chinese junk and leaking coolant and ruining the food in your fridge is
MUCH greater today than it ever has been.

Hence, it would be prudent to protect your food investment, if nothing
else, by using such a gauge.
[/QUOTE]

Its more important to buy a good fridge, not a piece of crap from made
in China. All it takes is a little awareness on the buyer's part. And
the ability to read the data plate... but maybe literacy IS too much to
ask these days.

 

That's simply not true. The HISTORY of the situation is that engineers
installed gauges for years. Then came idiot lights because designers and
stylists liked the "modern, all-electric" look of the dashboards they
could create. Then gauges made a comeback. THEN, the automakers started
getting complaints from people who'd grown up on idiot lights, and
didn't understand normal behavior, most particularly of the oil pressure.

THAT is when the "dummy" gauges that read mid-scale or nothing at all
appeared.

Engineers NEVER leave instrumentation out of ANYTHING if left to their
own devices. Left to their own devices they'd install an oil pressure
gauge before the filter, one after, and one at the last feed off the oil
galley. You'd have a water temp gauge before and after the radiator, a
transmission oil temperature gauge before and after the cooler, and 8
individual exhaust gas temperature probes.

He says, as if he'd know a fact if it jumped up and bit his ass....

 

This would fail to solve the first engineering problem,
which is have a good car of xyz dimensions. You can't get
everything in without trading off something else that is
important to the engineering. It's also false that engineers
do not make economic decisions. In this instance, more gages
= more manufacturing costs = less than optimal sales and
profit.

 

Toyota did not equip any cars with shift lights.

 

LOL. Yeah, my truck has the "hey dummy, upshift light you're going to
get an extra .25 mpg" and my TA is getting the "hey dummy, upshift
because the rev limiter's gonna kick in and you're gonna blow the motor"
light. (It's after I replace the shredded factory clutch.)

I forget that shift lights mean different things - when I say shift
light I assume the latter one.

Ray

 

if for their own testing, no. but engineers make stuff to be used by
people that don't know what they're doing. like you.

so you think an "engineer" is going to put a 747 flight deck
instrumentation cluster into my grandmothers lincoln and expect her to
learn to use it???? engineers aren't stupid.

says the guy that thinks a dummy water temp meter is giving him useful
information!!!

 

As a working engineer, I realize that. I might have exaggerated a bit,
but in general powertrain engineers would argue that electric seat
warmers be omitted to meet weight and cost before they would leave out
instrumentation. Certainly very few powertrain engineers would want to
leave something so basic as a temperature gauge and oil pressure gauge
out of their own car.

 

80s Corollas sure had them.

 

Stop drinking your name-sake while posting and you might understand more.

A major component of my WHOLE ARGUMENT in this thread has been that
DUMMY gauges are just idiot lights with pointers and are therefore as
useless as an idiot light. How could you POSSIBLY have missed that,
other than deliberately doing so just to pick an argument?

 

Me being a retired engineer specialized in power plants, it
depends on the instrumentation. (Call that a nitpick; I am
betting you know this.) A prime example is the tachometer.
Many automatic transmission cars have one. It could be
argued to be superfluous for auto trannies and manual
trannies. I suppose it is in auto tranny cars because it
helps sell the car, though.

I do not think anyone here disputes that some sort of gage
or idiot light--one or the other, at least--for coolant
temperature and oil pressure is a very good idea. We're
talking about automotive design and how systems integrate
(e.g. when it comes to using space; offering safety to the
passengers; etc.). A contingent of engineers will be focused
on passenger comfort, and with the marketing department,
they will run the numbers and find that the seat warmers
sell X amount of cars at Y price, so they need to make it
work for Z dollars a car.

Related aside: Laypeople of course can discuss this topic
intelligently, because this is about tradeoffs. Many of
these tradeoffs are understandable simply with the
application of common sense.

 

Not only that, but it is helpful, because one is able to determine what
gear a car is in by comparing the vehicle speed with the engine speed.
Plus, if one has a manual transmission, if the engine speeds seem to
creep up when going uphill, but the road speed stays constant, this
suggests that there is a problem with the clutch (and soon, your bank
account is going to take a hit).

Actually, good engineering means reducing the number of gauges. Imagine
if every operation on your computer required a gauge. You'd have one for
your disk drives, ethernet card, wireless card, one for each of your USB
drives, for the temperature, a bunch for different keyboard settings,
for your floppy diskdrive (older machine only), your fire wire, for the
state of the batteries, your video port, the audio I/O, etc.

Your computer would have more gauges than a nuclear power plant (and
Bush wouldn't be able to say it, either).

What about priests and other clergy members? Should they be able to
understand it?

There is some good info about how engines work on the internet (How
stuff works has a lot). Plus, there is this neat building(s) in most
towns called "a library" where they have books on the subject.

And if you're in school, you can ask your science teacher, too.

jeff

 

In my experience most drivers glance at the temp gauge rarely, if at
all. It is for that reason that most cars equipped with a temperature
gauge also come with a linked idiot light and sometimes a text-based
screen to alert the driver. I don't see where the loss of a
temperature gauge is any big deal for most drivers.

If you want a temp gauge, just add an aftermarket one on one of those
baseline cars you mentioned.

 

so why were /you/ making such a big noise about wanting a gauge?

quote:
"Gauges warn before the problem gets critical."

"The whole point is that the gauge will tell you when some things are wrong"

but now you're admitting that a warning light is as much use.

quote:
"gauges are just idiot lights with pointers"

so you're contradicting yourself and arguing for nothing!

bottom line: if you want full instrumentation, install it yourself. the
stuff you get with the car is good enough for the job it has to do. any
/real/ engineer should know that.

 

The meaning of "good engineering" depends on the goals of
what is being engineered. E.g. for a vehicle where engineers
and technicians are trying to improve XYZ, additional gages
ABC may be warranted, at least temporarily.

 

but in this day and age, you'd just record the computer's data output.
it's a host of feeds available, engine temp being just one of them. in
real time.

 

My memory must be getting bad... I don't remember shift lights in any 80's
Corollas, or any Toyotas, at least while I worked for Toyota.