Edit: Ignore the title. The pressure gauge is fine, both problems are regarding the temp gauge as noted below.

I'm using a Flamenco-T firewall kit for my oil pressure and oil temperature gauges. After getting it all hooked up the gauges fire up correctly (meaning they calibrate since they are Defi's) and the oil pressure gauge responds immediately and is right on the mark. The temperature gage however takes nearly 10-15 minutes before it even starts registering and even once it does it never climbs above 100 degrees F even after 20 minutes of driving. I'm assuming that the temp sensor needs to be placed in a certain manner to the path of the oil flow to work correctly?

If you think as my oil line kit as a "T" the oil line from the block ties into the bottom of the T. The oil pressure and temp sensors form the left and right side of it.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

From my experience, oil temp simply takes a longer time (i.e. at least twice as long as water temp) to reach warm and operating temperatures. Depending on min. on your gauge it will stay until it passes that obviously.

On that note, how important are self-calibrating gauges? LOL My stewart warners may sometimes get stuck at say 10psi when I shut it off, but when the motor is running the readings are always what they are supposed to be at.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by blackdc5 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">From my experience, oil temp simply takes a longer time (i.e. at least twice as long as water temp) to reach warm and operating temperatures. Depending on min. on your gauge it will stay until it passes that obviously.

On that note, how important are self-calibrating gauges? LOL My stewart warners may sometimes get stuck at say 10psi when I shut it off, but when the motor is running the readings are always what they are supposed to be at.</TD></TR></TABLE>


Well I'm talking about 20 minutes of driving AFTER the car is already warm. It will literally take 10-15 minutes before the gauge even starts to move off ZERO and it has yet to hit more than 100 degrees.

In terms of the self calibrating gauges I bought them simply because they match the rest of the interior of the Type-R perfectly and the car is still a street car.

 

How is the T connected to the firewall? Is it isolated from chassis ground? Electric gauge sensors need to be grounded to the chassis for accurate readings. If the T is isolated from the firewall with rubber or something, then you wouldn't be getting a solid chassis ground. You could try wrapping a wire around the exposed threads of the sensor and grounding that to the chassis to see if it improves the reading.

Oil temp does take significantly longer to come up than water temp, especially at normal RPMs. You should see it rise over 100* though and 20 minutes sounds like too long. Do you have an oil cooler? Maybe your temps could be low because you're reading the temp from a post-cooler location instead of from the pan? Just a thought.

- Scott

 

No, it has no additional oil cooler besides the factory one. The T is currently just zip tied to the firewall so I'll try your grounding suggestion however the gauge is already grounded through it's harness wiring.

 

AFAIK, the DEFI's come w/ their own wiring to the sender so I'm not sure how you'd be able to ground it.

I bet if both psi and temp sensors are connected to the same T, and if your psi readings are normal, it might be a sender or gauge defect...more likely a defective sender?

For my SW gauges, the sender ground says "Engine Ground"...does it really have to be an engine ground? I don't know....I wired up the 2 grounds for the gauge (1 for the light, 1 for needle) to the same ground wire and it has been working just fine.

FWIW: Just driving home from work, I observed my TEMP readings for you to reference: I drove around the block after warming it up a couple minutes or so (was uploading a revised kalibration after startup) and after I got around the block, it was still at or near min. (140*)...only til after that point when I drove towards the freeway and onto the freeway did I notice the TEMP climbed to 180 then to 200. It's about a 12-15mile drive home taking me 10-15 minutes of freeway, and it only reached a little over 200, when my normal freeway TEMPs are 220*F on the dot.


Modified by blackdc5 at 8:57 AM 1/21/2007

 

The ground for the gauge is only for the gauge. The sensors are typically grounded through their body when they are threaded into the block or oil pain or whatever. However, I know someone who tried to splice a water temp sensor into his upper rad hose by using a housing that disects the hose. His readings were crap until he finally ran an engine ground to the housing and grounded the sensor. Anyway, this is still just a guess, but it is important for the sensor itself to be grounded.

 

Not knowing anything about these gauges I'll throw out one idea that occurs to me. Could it be reading in degC instead of F? 100degC=212degF.

The other thought is, does the sender location see significant oil flow? If it is at the end of a T, very little oil will flow there. Fine for pressure since that is basically the same in a whole system but a temp gauge needs to see the main flow. Oil pan is generally the best place for a temp sensor but often a bad place for sensor safety as far as potentially bottoming it.

 

If i read this right your oil temp gauge is in a T fitting. I found that this method does not work for accurate temps.

this is what I had to do to get accurate temps https://honda-tech.com/zero...age=2

 

The gauge is definitely in Fairenheit but thanks for the suggestions and ideas. I'll try them out as soon as I can. I'm just glad the pressure gauge is working correctly because that would have sure made me sick to my stomach lol.

 

Oil out on a blocked off T isn't flowing anywhere, you'd have to wait for it to absorb heat thru the rest of the oil which would take a while. That set up would work if it was a turbo feed line, but not if it's blocked off.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ActiveAero &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">The gauge is definitely in Fairenheit but thanks for the suggestions and ideas. I'll try them out as soon as I can. I'm just glad the pressure gauge is working correctly because that would have sure made me sick to my stomach lol. </TD></TR></TABLE>
I would hope not, especially after spending that much on gauges. Let us know how it works out. Pics would even work great!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by sporkcrx &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Oil out on a blocked off T isn't flowing anywhere, you'd have to wait for it to absorb heat thru the rest of the oil which would take a while. That set up would work if it was a turbo feed line, but not if it's blocked off.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Wow that actually makes complete sense. I feel dumb now lol. I wonder what's the easiest way to get this to work without tapping the oil pan?

* goes off to brainstorm*

 

sandwich adaptor? that's what i'm using...

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by blackdc5 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">sandwich adaptor? that's what i'm using...</TD></TR></TABLE>

Yeah that's what I'm thinking. Seems easier than messing with my pan.

Heck I might go ahead and get a entire oil cooler setup while I'm at it. Alabama summers aren't kind to oil temps.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ActiveAero &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

Wow that actually makes complete sense. I feel dumb now lol. I wonder what's the easiest way to get this to work without tapping the oil pan?

* goes off to brainstorm*
</TD></TR></TABLE>

I'm not sure if it'd be compatible with your gauges, but I've seen set ups where the sensor is built into the oil drain plug.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ActiveAero &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Yeah that's what I'm thinking. Seems easier than messing with my pan.

Heck I might go ahead and get a entire oil cooler setup while I'm at it. Alabama summers aren't kind to oil temps.</TD></TR></TABLE>
i was considering the oil cooler setup too lol but settled for just the gauges as i wanted to get em in quick for a rapidly coming track day.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by sporkcrx &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I'm not sure if it'd be compatible with your gauges, but I've seen set ups where the sensor is built into the oil drain plug.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I have mine setup like this right now. It's not ideal, but the bung on my normal pan was leaking, so I had to switch to my spare which doesn't have a bung welded. It's actually very easy to do. You just use a drill press to drill a hole down the center of the drain pan bolt, then use a 1/8" NPT tap (at least for my autometer senders) to tap the threads. When you change your oil, you just pull the wire off of the sender, then use a wrench to turn the drain bolt. I haven't had any problems running mine this way, but I'd still prefer to have it in a bung welded into the back of the pan. I worry about potentially bottoming out or catching it on something and dumping my oil on track.

 

Yea that's a drawback to it. I think VDO sells the plugs too if someone doesn't want to drill it themselves.

 

On a related note, what is a good oil temp for daily driving? Since installing my cooler, the oil temp is usually between 180-210F. Does this seem high enough?

 

K or B series? City driving for my K is 200ishF, 220ishF for the freeway.

 

It's a B18C1... now that it's winter, I haven't been getting much higher than 190F. I have a piece of cardboard that's covering about half the cooler, but maybe that's not enough.