Thread: Engine watch dog

Originally Posted by roverfj1200

About to fit a engine watch.. Any pointers like where to mount the sensor and where to come through the firewall. Cheers

Interested in the logic of what it would add. I get the impression that the cars already happily throw errors and go into limp mode with their standard sensor arrays.

Originally Posted by roverfj1200

About to fit a engine watch..

What version/sensors you got with it - just the block temp sensor or the low coolant level sensor or the additional sensor to go on something else like the gearbox or the combo unit with everything.

If just the block sensor then mount to the block or head but away from coolant passages as coolant temp can influence the readout.

I have a combo unit on my Rover V8 - block sensor mounted to a bolt that holds the valley cover. The coolant low level sensor is in the top radiator hose so that if there is a catastrophic coolant loss it sounds immediately. With the temp sensor on the block away from the coolant (eg thermostat) housing you can see coolant temp change on the temp gauge but the waterwatch temp of the block remains relatively steady.

Garry

Originally Posted by 101RRS

What version/sensors you got with it - just the block temp sensor or the low coolant level sensor or the additional sensor to go on something else like the gearbox or the combo unit with everything.

If just the block sensor then mount to the block or head but away from coolant passages as coolant temp can influence the readout.

I have a combo unit on my Rover V8 - block sensor mounted to a bolt that holds the valley cover. The coolant low level sensor is in the top radiator hose so that if there is a catastrophic coolant loss it sounds immediately. With the temp sensor on the block away from the coolant (eg thermostat) housing you can see coolant temp change on the temp gauge but the waterwatch temp of the block remains relatively steady.

Garry

I got the engine guard one with 2 sensors.. I use the car to tow. I understand the 3 litre diesels can have the coolant housing on the front fail.. For this reason a second line of defence seems warranted. I am yet to have a good look round but thought maybe someone would know a easy way to get the wires into the engine bay.. Cheers

Originally Posted by roverfj1200

I got the engine guard one with 2 sensors.. I use the car to tow. I understand the 3 litre diesels can have the coolant housing on the front fail.. For this reason a second line of defence seems warranted. I am yet to have a good look round but thought maybe someone would know a easy way to get the wires into the engine bay.. Cheers

You can probably leverage the Traxide instructions / posts as they are 319/320 specific. But there is a primary grommet with capacity.

This is a topic ive wondered about too, as i recently bought 2 (get good discount) of the engine guard, with temp and extra sensor wire (eg stock oil sensor splice),

Primarily for my td5, and I have it running on that and it works well, I put the temp sensor on under a oil cooler housing bolt.

Im considering putting it on the tdv8, but havent looked for anywhere to mount the display yet. For the firewall, where i ran my electric brakes though was pretty easy, there is a big rubber grommet for the steering shaft i think it is, just put a small hole near the edge and thread through.

Interested in the logic of what it would add. I get the impression that the cars already happily throw errors and go into limp mode with their standard sensor arrays.

I too would hope and expect that the car would throw up obvious errors and chimes if it was getting too hot or lack of oil, but do I want to just assume that ... And even if it does have a high temp alarm, it might be higher than i like, would be great to know what it was. It would also be good to see the actual temperature of the engine, rather than the standardised middle of the gauge for +-20% deg c (guessing) display.

Tempted to make a custom CAN based display/monitor too, as theres plenty to monitor there, but that is a bit of time too....

What about an oil temperature gauge?

Originally Posted by gruntfuttock

What about an oil temperature gauge?

engine guard kind of acts like that

Originally Posted by haydent

engine guard kind of acts like that

Ummm, i don’t think so as engine guard monitors the temperature of the block, monitoring the oil temp tell you just how hard your engine is working internally and the coolant temperature goes up with the oil temp but not at the same rate, at least that is my understanding.