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

Discussion in 'Fit' started by bubbabubbs, Apr 4, 2008.

  1. bubbabubbs

    bubbabubbs Guest

    How is such an aftermarket temp gauge installed - under the hood, and
    how is it mounted on the dashboard/instrument panel? How much does
    it
    cost?
     
    bubbabubbs, Apr 23, 2008
    #81
  2. bubbabubbs

    John S. Guest

    You need to locate the temperature sending unit on the block and find
    a place in the interior to mount a gauge.

    When you buy a gauge you should get a sending unit with two
    connections - one for the idiot light and one for the gauge. Hook
    them both up, wire the gauge and you are off and running. The hardest
    part will be finding a keyed power source for the gauge and a proper
    ground. It's really pretty straightforward if you have worked on cars
    before. If not, just have a local mechanic do the work.
     
    John S., Apr 23, 2008
    #82
  3. bubbabubbs

    jim beam Guest

    just use the engine computer to give temperature output. its sensor is
    best located to get the best reading, unlike a bolt-on.
     
    jim beam, Apr 24, 2008
    #83
  4. Or, just buy the gauge that plugs into the standard OBD II port and
    displays lots of things.
     
    Elmo P. Shagnasty, Apr 24, 2008
    #84
  5. bubbabubbs

    Dave Kelsen Guest

    He was clearly talking about the use of actual working gauges,
    specifically as opposed to those which are dressed-up idiot lights.

    RFT!!!
    Dave Kelsen
     
    Dave Kelsen, Apr 24, 2008
    #85
  6. bubbabubbs

    Steve Guest

    Because /not/ wanting one is just stupid. Sure, there are reasons for
    el-cheapo line cars not to have a gauge, and that's fine. But for any
    driver to say "I'd rather have a light" is just flat dumb. No way around
    that.

    What really gets me is the idiot gauge- costs MORE than a light, but is
    less useful (because it doesn't attract attention, and worse yet may
    even give the unwitting driver the impression that its a real gauge.
    Not at all. Gauges do warn you before things get critical, and you
    blatantly left out the obvious part of the second statement, which is
    that a gauge will tell you when some things are wrong WHICH A LIGHT
    WON'T TELL YOU. Hence my examples of 1) a dead electric fan which was
    indicated as a slightly abnormal gauge reading but which was not far
    enough out of range to have turned on a light, and 2) abnormal oil
    pressure behavior which indicated a collapsed filter causing the bypass
    valve to open, but was technically within the "normal" range and never
    turned on the idiot light.

    No, I never said that YOU read it that way, but its not what I said. I
    said that "idiot" gauges (the kind that are just controlled by a switch
    which either sets them to the normal range, or drops them to zero) are
    just idiot lights with pointers. I never said that real analog gauges,
    whether mechanical or electric, are idiot lights with pointers.
    No, you're just showing the fact that you aren't actually reading (or
    comprehending) posts, you're reading a few words then shooting off your
    message while missing the main points. As has been the case every time
    you blunder into rec.autos.tech.
     
    Steve, Apr 24, 2008
    #86
  7. bubbabubbs

    Steve Guest


    And even though its mostly window dressing, it does come in handy even
    in an automatic car to indicate if the transmission starts slipping, TC
    clutch fails to lock, etc. But yeah, 99.999% of the life of the car, a
    tach in an automatic is worthless and a prime example of something
    that's there ONLY for marketing.

    Agreed. Sad though the result may often be....
     
    Steve, Apr 24, 2008
    #87
  8. bubbabubbs

    Steve Guest

    Of course, you CAN call up programs that do monitor and put a "gauge" on
    all of those items. Right now I have a CPU utilization bar graph in the
    lower corner of my screen. I can switch it to network I/O, disk I/O, or
    disk space used if I want.

    Good engineering really means making the RIGHT information available at
    the RIGHT time. With a car, the critical things that need to be
    displayed are fairly simple: Engine temperature, oil pressure, speed,
    and fuel remaining are the big 4. The best designs, as I have said, make
    all 4 available as analog readouts, and ALSO will turn on an
    attention-getting light and/or ring a chime if any of them (except
    speed) get out of the normal range. That's been done for decades (my
    wife's 1993 car being so equipped) so its just DUMB to regress.

    The point I've been belaboring is that to reduce oil pressure and water
    temperature to ONLY a warning light is actually denying the driver
    information that he/she might occasionally want or need, and which can
    be valuable. Certainly the average driver doesn't need to know the
    exhaust gas temperature and oxygen content, but with only 4 basic
    readouts really NEEDED, why deny any one of them? It would be a
    different matter if there were 10 parameters equal in importance to oil
    pressure and coolant temp and designers would have to start making
    decisions about what needs to be primary and what could be secondary,
    but there just AREN'T!!
     
    Steve, Apr 24, 2008
    #88
  9. bubbabubbs

    Steve Guest

    There are a couple of different types. An old-style purely mechanical
    gauge has a pressure bulb that gets screwed into a coolant passage in
    the engine block (you can often "tee" a fitting in so that it shares the
    same coolant port as the car's own idiot light sensor. A capillary tube
    runs to the gauge mounted on or under the dash. These are usually very
    accurate, even for the cheap models under $25. The drawback is that you
    have to be very careful in routing the capillary tube because if it
    becomes kinked or broken, the gauge is useless. You also have to have a
    large enough hole in the firewall to feed the pressure bulb and
    capillary through.

    Electric gauges have an electric sensor that goes in the coolant, just
    like the capillary bulb. But you can install it, and then route the
    power and sense wires however you need to. They're more expensive, and
    the lower end ones are not always very accurate.
     
    Steve, Apr 24, 2008
    #89
  10. Because /not/ wanting one is just stupid.[/QUOTE]

    In your narrow world.

    In the real world, plainly, things are way different.
     
    Elmo P. Shagnasty, Apr 25, 2008
    #90
  11. Not at all. Gauges do warn you before things get critical,[/QUOTE]

    You are assuming one HELL of a lot here. You assume that people know
    how the machinery works in the first place. That's a strong presumption.

    Without the operator knowing how the machine works in the first place, a
    gauge is absolutely useless.

    See, your mind is in a very, very narrow place. YOU wanted to know how
    the thing works, so YOU found out. Others don't know, don't want to
    know, and in many cases can't understand it even if they try. A gauge
    is useless to those people.

    The world where all you need to know is that "gauges warn you before
    things get critical" is Springfield, and Homer Simpson runs the nuclear
    power plant equipment.
     
    Elmo P. Shagnasty, Apr 25, 2008
    #91
  12. bubbabubbs

    jim beam Guest

    Steve wrote:
    and i never said. "wow, what a fucking idiot!!!"
     
    jim beam, Apr 25, 2008
    #92
  13. bubbabubbs

    jim beam Guest

    what's the point when the engine computer can output the data for you????
     
    jim beam, Apr 25, 2008
    #93
  14. bubbabubbs

    Scott Dorsey Guest

    You are assuming one HELL of a lot here. You assume that people know
    how the machinery works in the first place. That's a strong presumption.[/QUOTE]

    No, not really. I remember in driver's ed, a few decades ago, the
    instructor explaining to us that every few minutes you should move
    your eyes over the instrument panel and look at the gauges and see that
    they are all more or less nominal. If anything is in the red, pull over
    and call for help. If you notice it moving toward the red, get ready to
    pull over and call for help.
    No, they still have eyes. Now, it's true that there are people who do
    not do the periodic glance over the instrument panel and notice where
    everything is, every few minutes. That is bad, but it's an easy skill
    to learn.
    --scott
     
    Scott Dorsey, Apr 25, 2008
    #94
  15. bubbabubbs

    Scott Dorsey Guest

    The point is to have a nice clean interface that you can look at every
    few minutes when you scan the panel.

    The engine computer can give you all kinds of useful information, but if
    you have to page through a dozen menus to get it, you will never see it in
    time. And information you never see is not useful.
    --scott
     
    Scott Dorsey, Apr 25, 2008
    #95
  16. I remember them teaching us to always use turn signals...

    You can lead a horse to water, (you can even shove it's head down in the
    water,) but you can't make it drink.
     
    Nick Cassimatis, Apr 25, 2008
    #96
  17. No, not really. I remember in driver's ed, a few decades ago, the
    instructor explaining to us that every few minutes you should move
    your eyes over the instrument panel and look at the gauges and see that
    they are all more or less nominal. If anything is in the red, pull over
    and call for help. If you notice it moving toward the red, get ready to
    pull over and call for help.[/QUOTE]

    If all you're looking for is "in the red, pull over" then a dash light
    does a MUCH better job of alerting you. That's simple psychology.

    Unless you know the principles of operation of the whole machine, the
    gauge will indicate nothing to you. It may be behaving perfectly normal
    within its own context, but if you don't know the context then you don't
    understand its behavior. If the needle wiggles around up and down, the
    guy who has no idea what the gauge is for will worry. Hence the "idiot
    light driven gauges".

    And if all you end up with are "idiot light driven gauges," then just
    put in idiot lights. You save money, and you get a better alert.
     
    Elmo P. Shagnasty, Apr 25, 2008
    #97
  18. bubbabubbs

    Steve Guest

    1) cost
    2) simplicity
    3) redundancy
     
    Steve, Apr 25, 2008
    #98
  19. bubbabubbs

    Steve Guest

    You are assuming one HELL of a lot here. You assume that people know
    how the machinery works in the first place. That's a strong presumption.[/QUOTE]

    A minority, but fairly large, percentage of car buyers are enthusiasts
    that understand how things work.
    My wife doesn't have a clue how things work. She still told me, "the
    temperature gauge on my car is going about a half-division higher than
    it used to when I'm at a light, do you think something might be wrong?"
    That's when I found the dead fan motor. That would have never...
    NEVER... happened with a light or an "idiot" gauge that snaps to its
    normal range or to 'overheat'. The gauge in her car is entirely modern-
    its digitally driven by the body control module based on a feed from the
    powertrain control module, which gets the information from the analog
    sensor... HOWEVER, it moves linearly and accurately with temperature
    inside the normal operating range and a bit to either side, so you can
    very clearly see small changes. Its the best of both worlds.

    Not as narrow as yours, apparently. You're the one that wants to force
    every driver to the lowest common denominator of instrumentation.
    Its also harmless to them. Better yet, after watching a gauge a while,
    they'll learn what it means just like my wife did.
     
    Steve, Apr 25, 2008
    #99
  20. bubbabubbs

    Steve Guest

    Not true at all for something as simple as oil pressure and water
    temperature! This isn't rocket science.
    And my grandparents and great-grandparents, some of whom never completed
    high school (and at least one grandmother CERTAINLY didn't "understand
    the operation of the whole machine") read analog temperature and oil
    pressure gauges perfectly well. Never melted down an engine, never took
    it in to the mechanic unnecessarily either. Are you telling me that
    driving-age people of 2008 are simply too stupid to do such a simple task?
     
    Steve, Apr 25, 2008
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