trouble shooting

[nwcali6]

 
  Just thought I'd throw this out there..

  I used a egt/boost gauge on my TDI's...

  They are great at telling you what your diesel is (and is not) doing...

  I ordered another one of the one I use today and realized I can also get a probe and use it for oil temp, coolant temp, as well.. So one control head, three probes...

  http://www.ebay.com/itm/DIGITAL-EGT-THERMOMETER-PYROMETER-W-Probe-/190286130870?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&hash=item2c4defeeb6&vxp=mtr

  Thats the ebay listing for it..

  Also has a high alarm that you can set...

  A great tool, will let you know if your N75 or turbo has failed (or is not performing well) and I'd imagine give indications to blocked intercoolers as well (or leaks).

  One a day to day use they give great indications on headwinds (or tailwinds) and grade levels/weight of you vehicle..

  Who here has not used one?  (I imagine many of us do) and which one do you use if you do?  The above one was $71, shipped, and is a good unit with a small egt probe.

[damac]

I use them on my old cars ever since last april when a family member overheated and locked up my turbo diesel jetta   Even though I instructed a million times to pay attention to gages.  She watched the low coolant level light go off, and then the temps rise and decided to just drive over the next hill before pulling over and locked it up.  Limped it home with water spraying out the reservoir and trying to overheat.  Engine is still on the shelf and doesn't appear to have scuffed cylinder walls or a warped head, not even cracks between the valves!

Anyway that is my story

I also suggest the little boxes they have  to mount each which makes the profile larger but I learned the hard way its not good to have them loose and bouncing around.

I use an aircraft alarm as the aux alarm I got off ebay.  Annoying.

I use 3 seperate gages because they told me that the unit cannot monitor each input at the same time   So you can switch over but that doesn't do any good when driving or split second problems.

I have oil pressure, water temp and egt, which can double for boost if you care to monitor that once in a while.

[nwcali6]

  I ordered my boost off McMaster-Carr as all the automotive ones seem to show way higher boost than I'll ever run and often show vacuum as well (which is useless for us)...  Now that I mentioned that I need to order another one of those as well.

  It wouldn't be hard to make the high egt tied into the fuel shutoff, a simple relay.  You could set it at like 1100...or 1200, or 1400 (if you make it that far)... Then people who borrow it wouldn't burn it up for you..

 

[damac]

That is why I like the digital gage readout with actual for boost as well, who cares about looking up on a chart, it will just show what is actually going on.  And auber sells the boost senders as well.  I will never run a regular gage again.

Only complains I have is daytime viewing, right now mine aren't absolutely mounted because I have to do a dash swap later, etc.

I have them high up so you won't see anything at times.  They need to be set in the right spot lower I think, with something over the top to provide shade.


And yeah the gage trigger just puts out voltage to that lead for your "alarm" so you could take that to a relay, etc.

But I would never have it shutoff the car, that just isn't safe

[nwcali6]

But I would never have it shutoff the car, that just isn't safe

  I thought about the not being safe part most of the night...  Most cars have rpm limiting.  As this would be a normally closed circuit most likely a failure of the egt side would stop it from running unless the egt's went too high.  If left in gear as soon as the egt's dropped you'd still be able to drive.  I guess one could even get creative though and put in a timer so egt's would have to be above set temperature for set time.  Or you could put a plunger oposite of the throttle lever that could be activated to force less fuel.

  My original post was intended to focus on the diagnosis of a engine not working properly. 

  If someone chimed in with a way to monitor timing while driving we'd know exactly how to "tune" our engines better (between the three of them)...

[libbydiesel]

Use it to control an N75 valve in the boost line to the LDA.  If EGTs exceeded a certain pre-determined point, the fueling would automatically be reduced.

[vanbcguy]

Use it to control an N75 valve in the boost line to the LDA.  If EGTs exceeded a certain pre-determined point, the fueling would automatically be reduced.

I am planning on doing exactly that on my build. I've had a couple Auber gauges sitting here for a while now.

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