Oil pressure and temp gauges

Hi guys. I live in Melbourne and want to install oil press and temp gauges to my 1971 beetle. Two questions. Is this something easily done by a novice? If not can you give me some suggested fitters in Melb. Cheers

Yea, easily DIY-able. Now thing is will be that unless you have had the case machined for full flow then you're left with where the current oil pressure low warning sender sits and if you wish to pay for it there's a temp sensor that takes the place of one of the pressure relief valves. Afraid you'll have to search for that one as not something I'm personally interested in but there's nowt wrong with them.

If you just want to use the current pressure sender location then to fit both pressure, warning and temp you will need either a t-piece to screw into the crankcase and then a dual oil pressure and warning light sender unit and seperate temp sender unit. Or if you can find a 3 way t-piece you could have the 3 sperate senders of warning, pressure and temp.
Another option for the oil pressure is a mechanical gauge which you'd have to run a small gauge pipe from the engine to the dash. IMO the mechanical units are more accurate and reliable than the electronic gauges unless you have a good quality gauge less affected by voltage changes.
So the mechanical side of things is very straight forward as you just have to screw the senders and t_piece onto the engine. Bit of hydraulic thread lock is better than PTFE tape on an engine and the rest is just running the wires to the dash gauges. 🙂

Thanks for the advice. I will give it a go.

Ive run a temp sender in the T piece and and in the case, they read about the same but the T piece one takes longer to heat up.

One thing to consider with using two senders in the T piece is that its extra weight on a very small thread, for this reason dual pole senders are the go.

Mechanical gauges are superior to electric but if your unlucky enough have a line split you will curse it, they usually don't split from pressure but from stress if they are damaged

The oil relief screw area is good, if you can score a spare screw any good machine shop can drill and tap it for you, they just need to screw it into a suitably sized nut so they can grip it in a lathe chuck.

jakeandco1958 wrote:Hi guys. I live in Melbourne and want to install oil press and temp gauges to my 1971 beetle. Two questions. Is this something easily done by a novice? If not can you give me some suggested fitters in Melb. Cheers

Thing to look out for is the thread where the oil sender is now, its a tapered pipe thread... so if a tee piece is used You need to be extra careful, because if the tee piece is screwed in too far - because the thread is tapered - You will break a piece of the threaded part of the engine block...
You can use PTFE tape [if You are familiar with using it] or a loctite pipe sealant type of product or most loctite products will be OK...
all the threads must be clean to use loctite...

You can get temperature senders that screw into the sump plug hole....

I wouldn't really recommend having a temperature gauge in an air cooled beetle because they run VERY HOT most of the time....
I know people who have taken them out because You are looking at the HOT temperature shown ALL the time.... and worrying...
The tell Me its better NOT to know the temperature... lol..😂

You used to be able to buy a dipstick with a sender built into it, which flickered the dash oil light when it was VERY HOT, and then the light stayed ON when it was TOO HOT... these worked very well... but You need an extra [BRIGHT] dash light on the dash so You would notice it...

LEE

I fitted a VDO dipstick/temperature unit, along with the VDO dual sender unit that just screws into where the original oil pressure warning sender fits in the case.

The VDO dual sender unit gives both oil pressure also the low pressure warning light still functions.

Obviously fitted VDO Oil pressure and temp gauges.

Used to have oil temp sender unit fitted into sump plug, useless.

From memory I purchased the lot from Just Kampers.

I agree dipstick and sump plate oil temp senders are a pain

Out of curiosity, the engine hasn't been re-built at some stage with a universal case? If so, a popular place for the temp. sender is in the blank off plate for a type 111 filler. You could unbolt it , drill & tap it, and fit it in there.

Pressure sender is a tapered thread but pretty sure you can buy T-piece with a taper too. I've never measured the senders thread but if BSP they can come in tapered and then the American NPT is the American version of BSP but is always tapered 🙂

beetleboyjeff wrote:Out of curiosity, the engine hasn't been re-built at some stage with a universal case? If so, a popular place for the temp. sender is in the blank off plate for a type 111 filler. You could unbolt it , drill & tap it, and fit it in there.

Hi Jeff
well that is what I did with My oil temp sender... [old bad memory]
the blank off plate is very thick metal... but I'm not sure if I bought one with the thread already there, or tapped it???

My engine case or engine was from a type 3 as it has a type 3 engine number stamped on the top of the case...

and the tapered hole in the engine is probably BSP and the brass Tee pieces are readily available in the BSP tapered thread...

its just a problem of cracking the case to those who are unaware of the tapered thread problem....

LEE

VWs dont use BSP, the thread is 10 x 1

1303Steve wrote:VWs dont use BSP, the thread is 10 x 1

I didn't think it would be cos as I said I've never had to measure one. Tapered M10x1? Hmm, now that should be interesting to find 🙂

10 x 1 is a standard metric thread, both BSP and NPT come tapper and parallel threads.

Im pretty sure the case is parallel, the fitting is tapered

See, every day is a skool day 🙂

VW is 10x1
VDO do the correct adapter and I have some in stock if you can't find them