Happy New Year to all!!



I have just finished up swapping a J-Spec turbo II motor into my 87 N/A and the oil pressure gauge does not work, so I want to get an aftermarket one to monitor the pressure, and a water temp gauge as well. My question is which one to get; the mechanical or the electric gauges? Does the stock system run on mech. or elec.? I would assume the water temp is elec. and the oil pressure is mech. Thanks for the help.

stock is both electrical.



I run mechanical gauges because thats what I have run on just about every single car I have

ever owned.

Drawback is running the lines is a little more of a hassle then running the wires.

On a temp gauge hot coolant is not flowing into the gauge, it gets temp from a metal tube that gets heated up, there

is no coolant at all running through it.



Oil pressure requires a line with oil running through it, I have always run cheap nylon line and never had a problem, with

my motor swap I now ran a stainless braided line.



You may want to get a pedestal adaptor for the oil gauge, it gives you another port if you want to run oil temp as well, plus you can

retain your factory oil pressure gauge, the stock sender is cheap so why not just get another one if thats the problem?

Ground the wire from the sender and see if the gauge works.

OE uses electric gauges, but aftermarket ones come with sensors, typically you wouldn't use an OE sensor with an aftermarket gauge.



They're very simple to wire up, and simple to install the sensor(s).



If that's what you want to do, then I'd start a gauge circuit and fuse it, organize and simplify everything as much as possible. But I'd take Rob's advice first, verify the sender is functioning properly.

Mech oil gauges will show problems with oil pressure sooner than a electrical will. I hate my elec. gauge, there is about a 2 sec delay in the reading and the reading is always about 5-10 psi off.

Who makes them

lots of companies, I have Blitz mechanical oil pressure and water temp gauge I would sell if your interested.

They are autometer's. I have an HKS Egt gauge and it works pretty good, but I think its pretty hard to screw those up.

I'm not a big autometer fan either.. Quality dictates result. Electric gauges compute the signal electronically at the location, and send it electronically to the gauge. Mechanical takes a sample from the location up to the gauge itself, and measures the result there instantly. Between time it takes for sample to reach gauge versus time it takes electric signal to reach gauge, who really cares. Generally they're probably all the same for R/T, unless you're counting fractions of a second.

my autocrap is fairly responsive, its just flat out 5-10 psi off.