gauges

Maplin used to do a kit which sensed the current flowing in the battery earth strap - IIRC by measuring the voltage change across it, either positive or negative. This got round the problem of extremely heavy cables running to the dash - on many cars it would be physically impossible to find room for them.

It could use either a centre zero meter which would indicate the actual current flow, or a tri-colour LED which could be amber for normal, green for charge and red for discharge. I've got one on my SD1 with the LED which of course is easy to find room for, and as well as showing the charging system is working, it gave instant indication when the fan belt broke recently. ;-)

"CampinGazz" mumbled:

How about a water injection system that sprays a mist into the exhaust? ;-)

EEEHHHHHHHHHHHHH? The charging current of the alternator is irrelevent as you'll not be running it at night. Also you can buy 80 Amp alternators...

I was right then, amateurish way of doing it. Still, there's a few diesel shops that'll recalibrate the puimp when you f*ck it up.

Oh dear. May I suggest you go and learn how diesel pumps work?

You might as well. You'll be doing it blind anyway.

Here's a lesson for you.

A lorry has a rev counter for reasons other than those you're thinking of. It is used to gain maximise the use fo the engine as follows:

It has a green band. The bottom of the green band is maximum torque, the top of the green band is maximum power. If you accelerate from one end to the other, change gear and repeat you'll get the best acceleration performance and fuel economy. Accelerating above the green band is pointless.

After the green band it then has a yellow band with a blue bit above it. When using the exhauster brake, if I change down gear so the engine is in the yellow band with the blue bit above it the engine will give maximum braking assistance for the exhauster brake.

Oh dear..scraping the bottom of the barrel now are we?

Because it was a shitty little truck that used air over hydraulic. Proper lorries are all air brakes.

See above. It was a mickey mouse vehicle. A proper lorry has spring brakes. No air equals brakes fully locked on. If the compresor fails then as athe air pressure falls the brakes come on.

Hmm, not sure where I said I wont run at night, on my trip this time last year we did almost all of the driving at night going between camp sites and places to stay, so we have a 20 amp drain for the headlights, side marker lights and tail lights alone,

I already have a 90 amp alternator, I want to use it along with an advanced regulator to give me 4 stage charging just like my mains charger I use on the odd occasion I have access to shore power.

I was right then, amateurish way of doing it. Still, there's a few

yes, like the one just across the road from me, who calibrated it for me 2 months ago while the engine was being re-built, he was the one that told me to tweak the main fuelling screw slightly when I fit the intercooler, he leaves the lock wire off the main fuelling screw of all pumps I have re-calibrated so I can adjust it if needed, a line scribed across the threads and pump body tells me where it was originally set to anyway, so I can always set it back, if I f*ck it up, it's a 20 minute job to take the pump off, and take it over to be re-calibrated, tho if I tell him what I've done he'll just re-set the fuelling screw, I have my pump re-calibrated every 100,000 miles anyway, always have done and always will do, just like I replace my tyres at 5 years of age, even if they still have loads of tread left.

it pumps fuel at a certain pressure to open the injector nozzles when at a certain time per cycle, how it gets the information to do what where and when is purely mechanical, mine has only 2 inputs that vary that, accelerator and BPE devise, the more I open the accelerator lever the more fuel can be admitted, depending on engine revs, the more boost the turbo produces the richer the pump runs to compensate for the extra air being forced into the engine, oh and there's a thermo servo that operates the cold start advance lever, (which advances the pump timing a few degrees to help fire the fuel sooner when cold)

It's still all set up on a machine, not the engine, so when I add different lengths of intake pipe, an intercooler, different exhausts and the like, I'm altering how the engine breathes, and the fuel pump has no way of knowing this has changed other than the reduced or increased engine speed,

Have you ever noticed how most trucks loose power when you fit an eminox stack in place of the standard compact muffler, you can have the power restored by having the pump tweaked a bit, but that takes if from the stock test plan, so unless you ask for it to be done, the re-calibration will not be optimized for your engine's mods.

Exactly the same as the one in my van, at 1900 rpm a solid green line, this is where the turbo begins to spool up, I run about 0.3 bar at that point. (I already have a boost gauge, I just wanted one to match the other instruments I wanted) the solid green line goes onto 3100 rpm, then there's a dashed green line to

4000 rpm, the green dashes turn yellow at 4000 (fading from green to yellow for 400 rpm) then at about 4500 rpm its a dashed red line, then a solid red line, (not sure on the top half, as I never go past 3700 rpm)

the turbo is producing max boost by 2500 rpm, (0.9 bar boost.. should be

1.22 bar of boost for my turbo, hence I know I have a problem.. just like the one I had when they fitted the wrong turbo to my engine when it was re-conditioned, it had a large compressor wheel so didn't produce any boost until 2400 rpm, where I should have been on almost full boost)

At 2500 rpm with the correct turbo I get the kick in the back as the van surges forwards (I'm running empty at the moment, waiting to have a new body built in November) I get solid power up to 3700 rpm, she'll go more if I wanted but I don't as there's another gear, there's plenty of torque available for overtaking if I sit at 70 mph in top, doing 3150 rpm.. just at the end of the green line, she'll do just over 80 mph max and still be in the dashed green lines on the rev counter.

Climbing a hill with a bend as I exit town, I have to take the revs up past the green line ends (to about 3700 rpm) so the turbo is still on boost when I change up a gear and I can continue to accelerate up the hill to the 40 mph limit, if I change up at the end of the solid green line, 3100 rpm 'when I should' revs drop to around 1900 rpm and fall rapidly, the turbo is producing 0.2 bar boost and wont produce any more, I'll then loose speed until I drop down a gear and change up at the correct engine speed for that hill,

This shouldn't happen, it's a 2.8 litre direct injection, 4 pot engine, produces 106 bhp at 3600 rpm, and 232 Nm of torque at 1900 rpm, it's pulling a 1.5 ton van at the moment, I recon the engine is over powered for the van as it is, prolly just right when it's running at max weight after November, (it's the same engine that's fitted to the 6 ton welfare buses, so should be plenty for an empty van) according to those figures the van should pull strongly from 1900 rpm, yet it doesn't,

part of my low power problem apart from me still running the engine in, I think is due to the turbo maxing out at 0.9 bar of boost, when it should be producing 1.22 bar, (and I'm running the engine in as per the engine builders advise.. run it like you intend to drive it for the rest of it's life, avoiding max revs of course (which is 4750 rpm, I never go anywhere near that)

Well, I don't have an exhauster brake yet, something I plan on adding at a later stage, I do a lot of driving in mountainous regions, my favourite place is the Swiss mountains, especially the steep narrow passes, so an exhauster brake will be a welcome addition, as in the last van I had to decent in no more than 2nd gear otherwise I was using the brakes too much, but me fitting an exhauster brake is again my choice, prolly more valid than a few extra gauges, but all these things I want to fit because I'm building this motorhome the way I want it, if I wanted what other people think is 'ok for the job' I'd have bought a new one from Brownhills this time last year.

yes, but your view is that no extra gauges should be fitted other than what the manufacturer thinks are necessary, my girlfriends pug 106 diesel doesn't even have a coolant temp gauge, it has a light that comes on when your overheating, and checking on the Peugeot forums, when that happens it's time to budget for a new head as it's most likely warped.. especially as most people will just shut the engine down and allow heat soak to raise the temps even more.

I suppose I'm being silly wanting a turbo temp monitor later on to keep the engine running until the EGT falls below 300 degree's C too? some vehicles have them as standard, mine doesn't, but I can fit one to my van once I have an EGT gauge, and save me having to sit in the drivers seat with the engine running for a minute after stopping after hard driving waiting for the turbo to cool a bit, I can take the key out and lock the van up, and the engine will stay running until the turbo temp drops to a level where the oil in the bearings wont be turned to carbon when the engine is shut off and the oil supply removed from the turbo.

But it was a truck, made by Renault (that explains a lot actually :), they decided to use air over hydraulic brakes (it had spring chambers for the handbrake) they saw fit not to use a decent 4 way protection valve, and to fit a system that allows you to drive with no compressor for 50 miles, and have the warning light come on when you exhaust the final bit of air out of the parking brake chambers,

it was a shitty truck (with that twatty solenoid that locks the ignition key in until the oil pressure falls, a failed start and you have to wait 10 minutes for the thick oil that's produced high oil pressure while cranking to fall and let you try another start) but a simple air pressure gauge would have warned me I was loosing air, I then would have called in at one of our depots on the route and had it sorted, instead I was stuck at the side of the road, with the parking brake locked on and no air left to enable me unload the car on the back,

but in other trucks surely a falling air gauge is a preferable indication of problems ahead? or would having the brakes come on while in the middle lane of the M25 be good a enough warning for most people? (and I know how your going to reply with protection valves)

but it's a similar thing I want to do, I'd rather be warned of problems before they become critical, doesn't matter if it's the voltage regulator has packed up on the starter battery alternator (happens a lot on these vans, happened to 2 mates in the club in the past 3 weeks, and the warning light never came on, the monkeys that put my engine in plugged the B+ wire into the wrong terminal on the alternator, put it into the W terminal (phase tap) I never noticed I had no light on the dash when I started the engine for the first time after shelling out £3800, so the alternator never started charging, I only got alerted to the problem when the engine began to falter, as the stop solenoid was being released due to low battery voltage) What could have alerted me to the battery not being charged once the engine was started in that case, a voltmeter or an ammeter, I only want an ammeter to monitor the charge going into the leisure batteries, just I may as well put one on both alternators to even the dash out.

Another thing that happens to these vans when they get old, the turbo oil feed pipe becomes porous, iveco may have fixed that now, but it happened a few times on the works G reg iveco I once had, I was alerted to that when the low oil pressure light came on, and at the same time the bottom end started knocking, bod knows what happened to the turbo's bearings, we never kept the van long enough to find out the long term problems, but as the oil pressure sender in the hollow bolt that holds the turbo oil feed pipe banjo to the block, a gauge reading from there will warn me if I get a pin prick leak on that line,

I've got plenty of reasons why I want to fit extra gauges into my van, to monitor my new engine that I plan on running for the next 20 or so years, and I want to monitor the charge to my battery bank situated 20 feet back from the alternator, behind the rear axle and in an underfloor locker, if they were under the bed as most factory motorhomes have them, then I'd want to monitor them even more.

I've found that VDO's ocean line range of gauges covers all I want, seems boat owners like to monitor their most expensive systems too, shame I cant find others that do all the gauges I want, for a more reasonable price.

Ah, OK I'll shut the door on my way out :-)

It's a good point, though. But its most useful mode is with a tri-colour LED - you simply set it so it's amber with no current flow, green on charge and red with a discharge. Instant warning of problems with the charging circuit, and no problems with finding room for it unlike a gauge.

An exhauster brake is invaluable but you have to have the bottle to be happy listening to the engine screaming its nuts off for a period of time in order for it to be effective. A natural reaction is to change up a gear but that's precisely what you shouldn't do.

It wasn't that. It was against fitting guages that are pointless. Yes you can monitor absolutely every single little thing that's going on but TBH thre's really no need and some of the things you'll not be able to do anything about until you get to a garage but they don't affect the running ability of the vehicle. Having these guages is merely more to distract you from looking at the road ahead. It's a diesel engine. Properly set up and maintained it'll go for donkeys years.

Here's an alternative.

Alot of new generation HGVs now have driver information panels. They still have water temp/Rev counter/Air pressure/Fuel guages though. The panels monitor far in excess of what you want to. On my Actros it'll even tell you the PPM of the exhaust, the viscosity of the oil and how contaminated it is and a whole slew of other things on the fly that make your guages seem inadequate. The point is that it doesn't display any information barring outside temp and speed limiter setting until there's a problem occuring. Minor ones such as service due in xxxx km are displayed on startup for a minute then disappear. It'll even display the oil level when you start the vehicle. Other ones have an icon and a flashing notification bar. Press a button and it tells you the problem. A menu system is available, navigated by four buttons. IMO, a far better solution than a dash full of dials.

Hi "CampinGazz"

You sound like a complete knob to me!.