Project BRZ, Oil Pressure Gauge V2.0

In typical fashion, my plan didn’t work out, so now I’m onto Version Two of my oil pressure monitoring solution.

I left off the last instalment with the pressure side of the gauge working, but I had not received the oil galley plug adaptor yet, so had not installed the temperature sensor.

The adaptor arrived, so after work one night I quickly set about replacing it.

I used a decent, firm fitting, 8mm hex socket on a ratchet to crack the plug. It has thread sealer on it and was in quite firmly.

I originally fit the adaptor and then the sensor into it, but I would recommend fitting the sensor to the adaptor first and then screw the adaptor into the engine as it’s easier to get it nice and tight and sealing well as one unit. I also noticed during one of my many times removing the sensor and adaptor that after the first install of the sensor into the adaptor, there were a couple of brass shavings that came out with the sensor, which is easier to clean out with the adaptor out of the engine.

Anywho, the adaptor

With the temp sensor screwed into it

I crimped the terminals on the wires, and connected it up to the gauge (ignore the ugly tape, that is long gone)

So, what was the issue? Well, temperature differential was my issue.

I can monitor the oil temp with ODB2 in Torque, so it was quite easy to compare the gauge to what the engine was seeing

Early on, when its cold, its fairly close

But as the temps rose, the difference got greater. In the end I was seeing 10-15c lower on the gauge than in Torque

I had heard that the galley on top can cause a difference, so swapped the sensors; oil pressure in the galley port, and oil temp in the front of the engine.

It got worse

Now not only was it slow to respond, it was miles out compared to ODB2. I suspect this is because the sensor was in the end of the long adaptor and no longer seeing oil flow, only pressure, so it was more measuring the ambient temp of the housing than anything.

That was the final straw, a gauge that gives meaningless figures is useless. Oh, and it’s bloody bright at night, even dimmed.

With that failure under my belt, I looked around at my options. Annoyingly it seems pretty hard to find decent gauges, for a reasonable price, that have a PSI scale over 130PSI (my cold pressure).

Normally I’m a diehard analogue needle gauge kinda guy, but I noticed with that one how hard it was to read at a glance and the accuracy was “maybe this much” at that low end of the scale, so I decided to try a digital gauge this time.

I also scrapped the dual gauge idea and and settled on just a pressure gauge as thats more important since Torque can give me temperature for now (and I have an alternate solution in the works for temperature).

I removed the galley plug adaptor and refit the standard plug, and swapped the pressure sender to the new one. It’s a fair bit bigger than the previous gauge sender.

Using the old gauge wires to draw the new ones through, I wired up the sender (albeit backwards in this photo, I forgot G is gauge, not Ground)

Thankfully, it clears the stock airbox with plenty of room to spare

And the new gauge. White during the day

Dimmed and red during the night. It blends in very well with the stock gauges. Its a heck of a lot easier on the eyes than the last one too.

It seems a little slower than the previous gauge to respond to changes, but it’s a fraction of a second difference, really. You can see in the photos above that even at a glance it’s super obvious and easy to see what the pressure is. Over all, I’m happier with it, and hopefully it’ll give me some peace of mind when I take it on the track next month.