Quote:
Originally Posted by mechman600
As a dealership mechanic, I WISH they got rid of guages and stuck to idiot lights. For 95% or car owners (none who frequent this forum!), that would be enough. Too much info is usually a bad thing. Who cares if a coolant temp guage is slightly higher than normal - when the bells and alarms go off, stop the car!
And that is why OEMs make their "guages" so vague. If you need more, buy a ScanGuage.
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I heard that a long time ago and wondered if it still applied today. The example was that if 2 neighbors bought similar cars and one coolant gauge was higher than the other, it became unnecessary dealer service visit and created more work for folks in your line of work.
Using the coolant temp as an example, I know most cars now have a threshold position of "normal" until the voltage from the sensor goes beyond that the high range of normal and moves beyond it. When that happens for me, I know there's a cooling issue since I watch those things closely (like a lot of us here) -- the SG generally confirms the suspicion.
I had a new Beretta back in the day that was way off on the speedometer (indicated 6-7 mph faster than actual, at 60 mph), based on mile-marker calculations (way before GPS and SGs). First, I was concerned that my warranty would run out too quickly, since the odometer was accumulating about 3% more miles than actual (at the time, I was driving 35K a year, so that's about 1000 miles, which got me upset). So yeah, I called the dealer and got the lecture that 1 - Americans speed, so they need the mind-game to keep them out of trouble, and that 2 - the Government allows a certain speed/odo percentage of "error" from the factory. Not sure if that's the case, but I had to buy it.
When cars offered "Gauge Packages" our family usually opted for them to stay "fully informed car nuts"
Now gauge clusters and auxiliary pods are pretty similar from the factory, except for the up-market trim levels, but still very cookie-cutter for the most part...
RH77