gauges mechanical or electrical

I have autometer short sweep electric gauges and they're working well and seem to be rock solid accurate. I would HIGHLY suggest an Electric Speedometer if you're going to replace all your gauges.

We run mechanical ones.Lots of people say elec are accurate but have no oil pressure and what does everyone say.Put a mechanical gauge in to see what the real pressure is.I run braided line for the oil pressure.Better than copper and less likely to break.The plastic they give you is junk.Fuel pressure must be outside the car unless you run an isolator.Rocky

BLKOORT if you really want facts on gauges PM
me, I can provide you with anything you need.
No my buddy this and this guy I know crap.
I would be happy to give you a call to help you out.

No issues with running a mechanical temp gauge. I think we can all agree on that. If that little capilliary tube breaks, big deal, no harm. Oil is the messy one. I run a braided oil feed hose to a mechanical gauge. If I was to do it again, I would go with an electric oil gauge. Why? Well yeah the mechanical oil gauges are cheap, but those vinyl hose they give you with it are cheap crap. So what do you have to do? Drop another $25 on a braided hose and or fitting adapaters to guarantie a leak-free setup. But by then you've spent what an electric gauge would have costed in the first place. So to conclude, oil = electric, temp = mechanical.

But I do agree with rocky, whenever you have an oil pressure problem, first thing everyone says is to put a known working mechanical on it to see what's really happening. Less accurate, yes, sometimes it's nice to just be able to rule out electronics as a source of problems and move on from there. As far as accuracy with mechanical gauges goes, yeah they could be less accurate. I know when I swapped cheapie mech oil pressure gauges, according to the gauge my oil pressure suddenly dropped 5psi across the board. Am I worried about it? No.

For tachs and speedos, well I think almost everyone runs an electric tach, and no reason why not to. I like the electric speedos. You calibrate them by driving them, no need to change speedo gears and such, but just too much $ over the mechanical speedos by the time you buy the gauge(for the same or more price than a comparable mechanical speedo) and drop another 30 bucks on a speed sender.

Very nicely put.

thanks everyone, looks like I will be going with electrical gauges for the ones I want to add to the dart. Oil pressure, voltmeter, and probably fuel pressure.

Now I just need to decide on a style of autometer.

Well go to the track with 15 feet of rubber hose from the gas tank to the carb.They will bounce you out.Now go with braided.That and what are your brake hoses made from.Braided rubber.Just the plastic is too vunerable to melting.I had run it before and had no problems.But now I run steel braid.Rocky

I've been using Autometer Cobalt full-sweep electric gauges (Water temp, Oil pressure and Voltmeter) for a little while (spent all of last week in a vintage rally race so I've had my eye on the oil pressure for a very long time too).

They replaced 2 5/8 mechanical Procomp gauges (too bulky, I needed to add the voltmeter and did not want to retain the oil pressure tube inside the car).

The only drawback I found with the electric pressure gauge is this : displayed oil pressure varies with power supply voltage. It can be scary to see the needle fall down when you switch to neutral and let the engine idle when it's hot.

I had to add an idiot light for peace of mind (big red light, goes on when pressure goes below 15 psi).

Many times when the engine's hot, the gauge will report around 10 psi, but the light does not turn on.

I will be looking for a way to power the gauges with constant, rock-solid 13.8V very shortly.

I will also compare the electric gauge with a mechanical, just to check it's accurate.

Couple of things here, first how low is your voltage
actually going? Second I will guarantee the cobalt gauge is quite a bit more accurate than the sender for the idiot light. Third, 10 psi at idle seems a little on the low side to me.

The cobalt gauge still needs to have a good ground and power supply to work right. That said, it is still way more accurate than a mechanical.

What did you use to seal the threads? Any chance
something got inside the sender?

Final question on the sender, what does it look like? It is large and brass, or chromed on the body?