Hi guys, I have a 1.6 late bay, have recently bought a 30w solar panel which I will be running through a regualtor to the battery(s). Been thinking of adding a voltmeter to monitor the battery, but wondered if any of you guys had any experience in which gauges are worth adding i.e Twin voltage (normal battery / leisure battery) Ammeter Oil Temp (is it worth adding one to help detect problems early) Oil pressure (is it worth adding one to help detect problems early) I'd be interested in how useful they are, and how easy/difficult they are to install. Many thanks for any help and advice. James
Oil temp is handy for indicating a trend ie oil hotting up when motorway driving. I also have a voltmeter with a changover switch to indicate the state of charge of each battery....analogue damped so it doesn't jump all over the place when the load changes. Both are easy to fit. The sort of hardest part is making a cable run from front to rear for the oil temperature pick up. The voltmeter is quite straight forward as the probability is both voltage sources are within the dash board / front area. Oil pressure I think will just be another worry gauge...if the oil temp is climbing then you can be reasonably certain that the oil pressure is drifting in the opposite direction...time to ease back.
I had oil pressure, oil temperature and volts. Still got the volts. I've also got another voltmeter mounted on the board under the back seat which measures the leisure battery. I have a switch on that one so it isn't on all the time, just when I want to look at it. Oil pressure/temperature were useful not so I could worry about how hot the oil was or how low the pressure was, but as has been said above, indicating trends. If you get one, don't study it incessantly - you will crash because you're not paying attention tot he road, but use it as a way of learning what is "normal" for your engine. It then allows you to work out when something isn't right, and try and sort it out. For example, my engine was running hot down to Brighton Breeze one year - it turned out that the problem was a binding rear brake, and I was able to work this out and get it sorted out.
