Have a look at this page from Gene Berg Enterprises... they say that VDO plus other gauges are ALL CRAP... What do You think??
I am about to add some VDO Gauges to MY Beetles dash...
I thought VDO was a good brand of Gauge...
Here is the late Gene Bergs' comments on Gauges:
Yeh.....and 94mm pistons/cylinders are crap as well..... What a load of horse crap. Any guage should only be used as a tool and not soley relied apon. They are there to give an indication of what's going on. Also times/methods and quality have changed. I have VDO and SMITH guages and i use them as an indication of whats happening and wouldn't expect them to be 100% accurate....even if they were I wouldn't trust them.
what Peter said about that Mick said ... it seems that both my Kombi & Humber engines must be both long dead when I add 50 deg f to the temp readings they give sometimes
it is not necessarilly dead accuracy that is required, just monitoring for a variation of what they normally read, indicating a problem
Please, I need drivers side window regulator (winder mechanism) for my '54
BizarreModeratorThe artist formerly known as blue74l
Funny, all of Gene's tests were done nearly 40 years ago and his opinion has'nt budged!
I have huge respect for the dude, but come on! It would be like saying computers are no good because I tested one in 1967.
Ummm, I don't think Gene Berg's opinions are budging any more since, errr, how to put this delicately... Gene isn't budging any more. He's fallen off the (ratio) rocker. His compression readings are 0-0-0-0. His camshafts no longer bump. He had one stroker too many. He's running a (very) Low Energy Ignition system.
Any VDO gauges i have work fine, temp gauges there to monitor not to be 100% accurate, they do give me some idea as to whether im pushing the ol girl too hard and need to slow down, as with the oil pressure gauges...
byronbus wrote:Any VDO gauges i have work fine, temp gauges there to monitor not to be 100% accurate, they do give me some idea as to whether im pushing the ol girl too hard and need to slow down, as with the oil pressure gauges...
Same goes here no probs with the gauges...
only prob is me oil pressure is only registering a bit more than good old Gene's....blood pressure
Actually, the problem with this article by Gene was a common one, in that he reported observations without always understanding the science behind it. The problem with any attempt to measure an engine's "temperature" is what, exactly, you are measuring. Unfortunately you can't practically measure the parts that are being most affected by heat where it is occuring...
If you measure head temperature, the two most common points are the sparkplugs and exhaust studs, both will give different results and will differ due to how much the part and sensor are being cooled and the response time of the measuring apparatus - all together it will only give an approximation of what is occuring at the combustion chamber surface.
He went on a lot about the measuring of oil temp, 'cos you are always measuring an average and usually a cooled portion of the oil which will largely hide any variations in the important factor, which is how hot the bearings are actually getting. You would really need to use gas chromatograph to examine the oil from the engine, or rely on common sense, which is what he usually recommended, to the scorn of many f his peers.
thought i would chuck in my 2c worth... basically with any gauges you get what you pay for... want ultra accurate gauges then you will pay for it. i work as an instrument technician where i am required to repair/recalibrate/install etc instrumentation for a refinery. temperature is one of the hardest mediums to measure accurately.. many things effect this accuracy and as already stated in previous posts all car gauges are just to be used as a guide... even your speedo is only required to be +/-10% accurate by the ADR's. so to buy a $50 gauge and expect it to perform miracles is ... well... just plain silly... my company purchases equipment around the $5000 mark and it is still only accurate to +/-0.5%. (and sometimes not even that). i am in the process of trying to figure out the gauges i want in my beetle but know that before they go in i will take the time to recalibrate them to my own standards. That way i at least know the accuracy before i put them in.
see.... air and water do mix 😉
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hmmm i dunno why the gauges seem so important to Gene...when the majority of people are going to notice if the heat of the engine rises...if it aint accurate surely it still gives an account of what is happening. I have the feeling Gene might be referring to people that race vws and rely on gauges....this would be where accuracy be more important i spose.
vdo - they seem to work just fine to me. twas just a wee while ago i put my dmm with a guaranteed accuracy of .3% on the 20v scale and it read 14.368v and the guage read 14.4 so i rekon thats close enough for me as for my oil temp, if i go hard it goes up and when i slow down it retreats so it will do me and dr ferdinand as well
