LocostUSA.com

This is what is in front of me all of the time so you can probably figure out where my vote lies. As many gauges as you can fit on the dash and analog is preferred except for the moving map. I've flown with a Garmin glass panel (all electronic gauges) and didn't like it...too much info in too small a space. Steam gauges are best!

Bill

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Bill H
Winnipeg, MB, Canada

Ha! Yes, adding that z-axis of travel introduces the need for add'l info. But, methinks the key difference is that pilots are actually dependent on the instruments every time you fly; you'd probably have a hard time flying without them (excluding the auto-pilot function )

Actually, pilots aren't necessarily dependent on gauges. For VFR sport flying out of a private strip after one is use to the plane you can fly using your senses. That being said I certainly wouldn't remove the tach, altimeter, air speed, turn and bank, and compass that were in my plane.

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John - Slow and Steady. . . Well slow anyway
Build Loghttp://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=6245

Heck, my uncle's previous (plans built) plane used a handheld tach. Before take off he had to open the side hinged canopy, lean out, and point it a the prop to check rpm. Sure he might have crashed that plane due to improperly relatching the canopy after the prop speed check, resulting from the canopy popping open on climb out and causing the plane to stall...But the brief time it spent flying was almost purely by the seat of his pants. On a completely unrelated note, his new (kit built) plane has a tach and a few other such 'non-essential' items.

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-Justin

"Orville Wright did not have a pilots license." - Gordon MacKenzie

Little to no resolution and no trending with a couple leds per system as has been said.

For a mechanic, driving without instruments is like driving without a spare tire or even tire goop. The programmable idiot light should be big enough to indicate the cost of the tow based on gps input plus an engine rebuild.

If maintaining the equipment is important, cutting corners on instrumentation for weight or the cool factor is putting the cart before the horse.

Nothing is required if a person doesn't care about the equipment and/or doesn't know how to read the instruments or will ignore them.

A tach is useful for indicating proper operation of a cvt.
There should be a coolant temp gauge just for automatic transmissions.

Gauge housings are rotated so normal operation puts the needles vertical, making it more obvious at a glance if things are not right.

Programmable staged idiot lights (amber and red) on a corner of each gauge could be locost.

A smart cluster would notify when the engine was sufficiently warm to proceed normally without damage (efi masks inadequate warm up) and would learn normal conditions after a few cycles then pop up a gauge to display systems outside normal.

Compare your proposal to new instruments including sensors at about $20 per system (you will need sensors versus switches) or a steam triple gauge set for $20-30. I prefer "steam" analog but often have to use "electronic" analog due to the capillary tube being too short for mid engine applications if the instrument is to be installed in the dash rather than the console.

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Miata UBJ: ES-2074R('70s maz pickup)
Ford IFS viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13225&p=134742
Simple Spring select viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11815
LxWxHt
360LA 442E: 134.5x46x15
Lotus7:115x39x7.25
Tiger Avon:114x40x13.3-12.6
Champion/Book:114x42x11
Gibbs/Haynes:122x42x14
VoDou:113x44x14
McSorley 442:122x46x14
Collins 241:127x46x12

Let me ask it this way to community:

Can you tell me about a time where you took action based on your gauge's reading without either seeing an idiot light or without the needle crossing into danger territory? (could be your locost, daily driver, or other automobile)

Some simple examples:
-You notice your tank is 1/4 full and you fill up.
-You stay within 5 mph of the speed limit.
-Your oil pressure was decreasing slowly, so you shut it down before it ate itself and had it towed somewhere to figure out what was happening.

I cracked the Locost's oil pan on a chunk of road. I couldn't see the dummy light due to the sun but I could see the pressure gauge at 0. Saved the engine.

The cheap Craigslist engine in the Sprite had something go wrong internally and oil pressure plummeted. I had already paid for the track day and the engine was coming out regardless so I drove harder. Later I was able to correlate the loss in power to the 300 degree oil and decided to call it a day before it started puking parts.

I've driven several FSAE cars with only oil dummy lights that blew engines because of oil slosh. The light wasn't sensitive enough to show it. You'd find out after the damage was done.

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-Andrew
Build Log
Youtube

Perfect, thx! Exactly what I'm after.

alternator reading slightly low so serviced the system before being stranded with a flat battery.

once noticed strange temperature cycling on a Fiat 850 that I eventually learned was caused by a sticking thermostat. Unfortunately I didn't react to that one in a timely fashion and ended up cooking the engine and warping the head even though I'd had the warning.

oil pressure in my FF was off the end of the gauge on start-up after a routine engine rebuild. Turned out that someone (might even have been me as I'm the one that did the rebuild) had assembled the dry sump pressure relief valve backwards. I was shutting down just as the oil filter blew apart. No further damage to the engine. No indicator light would have helped with that issue.

Have often used the tach as a speedometer when the speedo was broken or not hooked up.

when I went to the Jim Russell Racing School they taught us to use the tach as a training tool. They allowed us to use only 3000 RPM as a maximum until we got our lap times consistent, then we were allowed to increase max RPM by an extra 100 each lap until we had worked our way up to redline. If we over-revved on a lap then you ween't allowed an increase on the next lap....they teach disciplined, consistent use of the engine and like you to start out with low revs so that you have the time to concentrate on line through the corners. They advocate that you use the same methods at the beginning of every race week-end.

I like information and lots of gauges.

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Bill H
Winnipeg, MB, Canada

I had the water temp gauge in my Miata start creeping up at a track day. I backed off enough to return it to the 'safe' range without having to shut it down out on the track and cause a disruption to the other drivers, or even pit right away. Unfortunately the Miata gauge doesn't give actual temps, and has a big dead zone in the normal operating range, so while I didn't know the actual temp I did know that it heading up from there was quickly trending towards disaster if no action was taken. The gauge allowed me to quickly see how much (if any) effect my actions were having, and whether or not more drastic measures were necessary. Even a multi-LED array that shows low (yellow below green), good (green), high (yellow above green), and warped.head (red) temp levels would have fallen short in letting me know that simply backing off was enough to remedy the situation. Rather it would have meant either unnecessarily shutting it down immediately when the yellow LED came on, or waiting anxiously to see whether the LED switched from yellow to green to indicate the all clear or yellow to red and having it become a full blown towed-home emergency.

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-Justin

"Orville Wright did not have a pilots license." - Gordon MacKenzie

Been thinking more about this. An easy method of fault detection is to use an open collector or open drain type of driver for the LED, where the output must be driven to GND to turn the LED off. In the event that something upstream of the LED driver fails open or is otherwise undriven, the LED will default ON. With this type of circuit, if it fails or gets stuck in the shorted/driven state, then it's harder to detect (b/c how would you know if the circuit was being driven due to normal operation or failure?), but hey, you can't protect against everything.

Instead of a traditional gas gauge, I'll probably use a multi-segment LED Bar Graph, something like this (it's about the size of a quarter):

I think I've found a pretty creative solution for my display that is functional, simple, robust, cheap, and should be aesthetically pleasing. It's all custom circuitry except for the speedo/odometer.

Funny story about the speedo, I was testing its brightness and decided to connect my simulated speed signal to it, just for grins. The good news is that it worked and went to 60 mph like I thought it should based on the pulse frequency I was feeding it. The downside is that I forgot that the odometer would start counting pulses immediately . The result is that I've now put 1 mile on my odometer without actually having a car yet. I guess to make up for it, once I have the car built, I'll have to drive it 1 mile without the speed sensor connected.

Myself I have the usual gauges, voltmeter, oil pressure, gas, water temp, speedo and tach.
For lights I have hi beam, turn signals and because I have a tendency to be an idiot at times I have a light for my emergency brake.
I did debate a clock, then thought, what am I nuts, not going to put a time on my fun, so no clock.
The turn signals double as hazards.

Al

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Super Seven 3.4

FMVSS 101 lays out which information displays must be present in a vehicle, as well as if it must be an indicator (displaying magnitude, like a speedometer) or just a telltale (warning light).

It even goes so far as to require certain colors for certain telltales.

It looks like the only indicator (read, actual gauge) required is a speedometer. Everything else would comply with FMVSS if it was a properly identified telltale light.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/CFR-20 ... etail.html