Yaris, Scion xD, Honda Fit - no water temp gauge

this may be true. However, that doesn't negate the usefulness of
proper, calibrated gauges.[/QUOTE]

See my comment elsewhere in this thread. A properly crafted computer
program can do a much better job watching a MUCH wider range of
measurements and integrate those measurements into a program that knows
what to look out for.

It is doing more things faster than the human could do.

 

ok, so you fit a gauge, and it shows oil pressure of 51psi. then one
day, it's 50psi. what are you going to do? at what pressure do the
bearings hydrodynamically separate? does the gauge tell you?

at what pressure to the bearings hydrodynamically separate?

are you trying to be funny?

what does the gauge tell you? what's the delta between fan on, and fan
off???

so what good is replacing the pump if the journals are worn? it's not
going to un-wear them.

explain why you think it achieves anything!!!

it's "new" to the vehicle, low mileage from japan. and having worked on
these engines, [zc cam, remember?] i can tell you for fact, they're a
screamingly excellent deal. sure beats fucking about with re-grinds and
re-bores when you find out that the shop doesn't know what they're doing
and the rebuild only lasts 50k. try that on the 944 motor and tell me
how long it lasts!

 

Exactly. The gauges that the engineer types want are useless to the 16
year old girl (for example) in her new Rabbit convertible. She has no
clue, doesn't want a clue, and will never have a clue what those gauges
mean. And she's the typical car owner nowadays.

I know it hurts, engineer types, but you are NOT typical in any way,
shape, or form.

It's far more accurate to program in sets of parameters that trigger the
"check engine" light. That way, the 16yo girl drops it off at the shope
where the hardcore type who knows what he's doing (that's my mechanic)
or the guy who knows how to look in the factory manual (most of the rest
of them) will know what the problem is.

If the programming is any good, it catches things before they become
catastrophes.

And let's face it: the computer can do a MUCH better job of watching
ALL the parameters ("virtual gauges") simultaneously and integrating
their values into a program that has been carefully crafted to see
things that a human with three or four gauges on the dashboard won't see.
[/QUOTE]

come on elmo, these guys are letting their hurt feelings get in the way
of their ability to understand at this stage. don't try to point out
reality - spare them the pain.

 

no, but the FSM will give you guidelines, or simply go by the general
rule of thumb that you need 10 PSI for every 1K RPM to safely operate an
engine under load.

see above.

Will your idiot light tell you if your oil pressure is suddenly 30 PSI
at 6000 RPM?

No, I'm trying to make a point, which is apparently sailing right over
your head.

Comes on about 92C IIRC and shuts off at a slightly lower temp.

I'm not talking about replacing the pump, I'm talking about replacing
the bearing shells with either new stock ones or .001 undersize if
necessary. If this is done before the engine is severely worn, the
journals will still be in good shape. If the journals pass the "penny
test" and mic OK why wouldn't you slap in $40 worth of bearings as
opposed to paying for a complete rebuild?

Because it does. I've done it on at least one car (Corrado G60) which
remained in daily use for years afterwards with no issues. Apparently
VW used a new experimental rod bearing that was supposed to be heavier
duty than the ones they'd been using for earlier cars, and it turned out
to be *less* durable. Once the car started showing signs of needing new
rod bearings, I simply took an afternoon and replaced the bearing
shells. It took about as long to repaint the oil pan as it did to do
the rest of the job (had I realized that brand new pans were like $20 I
might have popped for one of those instead...)

I'll be sure to let you know whenever it *does* need a rebuild... but at
the mileage I put on the car it'll be a genuine antique before it gets
to that point, likely.

nate

 

no, but the FSM will give you guidelines, or simply go by the general
rule of thumb that you need 10 PSI for every 1K RPM to safely operate an
engine under load.[/QUOTE]

Ummmmmmm.....and you expect your grandmother to know what this means or
remember it?

You expect the ditzy 16yo girl in her new Rabbit convertible full of
friends to know this, to remember it, and to be scanning the dashboard
full of gauges--remember what each one is, knowing what it means,
knowing what the rules are for each one, adn so on--instead of gabbing
with her friends or on the cell phone???

You are SO out of reality, it's not funny.

YOU want a dashboard that looks like a 747 full of gauges, when the
reality is that the buying public wouldn't and couldn't use them, and
would not spend the money for them on that basis.

 

If the computer is properly programmed to understand a VERY WIDE range
of parameters and how to interpret them, and to know that this sudden
pressure is abnormal, yes.

it's far easier for the programmers to come up with a program one time
than to try to hold a "internal combustion engine principles of
operation" class to train your grandmother and your neighbor's ditzy
16yo girl to know what each of those gauges means and any rules of thumb
regarding them.

 

It's tough.

 

so you're guessing? that's useful!

when it's drops lower, it'll tell you that the engine's fucked. but it
was by that stage anyway!

so spell it out - if you have a point.

so what does the gauge tell you???

that's removal and strip-down. and it's utterly freakin' pointless to
do all that work unless you make a proper job of it.

and btw, new journals, or worse, undersizing, is a pretty damned useless
waste of money if the journal is ovalized - and that's very much
typical. undersizing in that situation is actually going to cause a lot
of problems, not solve them.

it probably would have anyway!

and the signs were?

so you replaced the connecting rod bearings, but not the crank
bearings??? and with what did you replace them?

cop-out.

 

I'm not sure how often this is done. I know that VW used to have a
"dynamic oil pressure monitoring system" which used a little circuit in
the instrument panel to switch between two oil pressure switches based
on engine speed. It generally caused more false alarms than anything else.

I trust my eyes more than I trust someone to actually take the time to
do that properly. And if I see a simple open/closed oil pressure
switch, I *know* that that hasn't been done.

nate

 

My "guess" is far better than the info. you will get from a factory
idiot light.

But you can shut it down immediately in the gauge scenario to limit the
collateral damage. You really want to wait until a con rod makes a new
ventilation hole in the block? That'll turn a "rebuild" into a "crate
engine" real quick.

That gauges really do add value for a minimally clueful operator.

It lets me either confirm that the thermoswitch is working correctly -
or when I see the temperature significantly above 92C and don't hear the
fan running that either the thermostat or thermoswitch has failed and I
need to investigate farther before doing any more driving with that car.

It's not a lot of work at all. Drop oil pan, remove oil pump, replace
shells. Assembly is the reverse, etc. Don't have to pull or even lift
the engine on many cars esp. FWD ones.

It's easy enough to confirm or deny this with a simple mic.

Would you be willing to take that chance? Especially if it wasn't
*your* car but someone else's, someone you cared about?

In this case, since VW did *not* fit an oil pressure gauge, it was the
classic sound of rods rattling on overrun at about 2500-3K RPM.

Yup, no sense replacing parts that weren't bad. I simply replaced them
with standard size new shells, using the old, standard bearing
construction rather than the G60-specific experimental construction that
had proved problematic.

What difference does it make, anyway? So JDM engines are available for
cheap for your particular car, and not for mine. What does that have to
do with the desirability of being able to keep track of a few basic
operating parameters of an engine?

nate

 

If you value your labor at zero.

 

So what? Why should everything be dumbed down for her sake? All this
dumbing down does is build better idiots. So she doesn't know what they
mean, tough shit for her.

The catch all 'check engine light' is the stupidest thing ever. Back
when OBD2 was being debated the auto manufacturers actually wanted
something where the nature of the issue could be indicated to the
driver. The government said 'NO', that they wanted to panic people into
bringing their cars in.

What happens is people see the 'check engine light' and ignore it
thinking its' a minor problem because they've seen the damn thing light
up for a loose gas cap or tank of bad gas.

If there was nice LCD display that displayed the information it would be
better than the gauges. But if it's all going to go to lighting up a
single lamp if any one thing is out of range, then it isn't.

 

a spun bearing is not a thrown rod. rods throw because the cap bolts
fatigue, or much more rarely, because a rod fatigues. bearings or oil
pressure have nothing to do with that kind of failure.

but you don't have a clue unless you have the test data for that engine.
so even if you install an aftermarket gauge, you're still in the dark.

but listening for the fan is much more effective! no gauge required.

again, it's utterly freakin' pointless unless you do a proper job of it.

ok, let me spell it out - ovalizing is the norm. replacing a bearing
does nothing to fix that. and putting a new bearing onto an ovalized
journal can cause more problems than it solves because there is too much
direct contact and the bearing can spin.

dude, if the pressure suddenly drops, the motor's fucked. if it
gradually drops, when it reaches light-on, the motor's fucked. deal
with it.

and there's nothing any gauge could have done to prevent that! and the
telltale is the noise, not the pressure.

"experimental" is not used in production, it's used in the lab. if it
was different or substandard, that's not "experimental".

you're tracking nothing and to no effect. if the bearings wear,
watching an oil gauge does *nothing* to prevent it, you simply get to
watch in technicolor. and replacing arbitrary bearings is pretty much
pointless if the fundamentals of the engine design got the bearings to
wear prematurely in the first place.

bottom line nate, every point of your argument is that of recreational
activity, not real-world vehicle operation.

 

er, actually, the labor to rebuild a motor is /way/ more than to replace.

 

You mean to tell me that a spun bearing is NEVER the precursor to a rod
failure? Geez...

*I'm* not... they tell me useful info. And I *do* have access to the
FSM - for ALL of my cars.

How do I know when I'm supposed to be listening for the fan without a
gauge? I don't.

Unless it solves the problem and allows you to keep driving for a modest
cost for several more years.

My experience has been that in the car bearing replacements, while
admittedly a doglick fix, do sometimes provide a real benefit if the
rest of the engine is in good condition.

And I *am* dealing with it. You, apparently, are willing to wait until
the engine starts making terminal noises to even discover that there is
a problem. I would prefer a little warning so I don't end up hitchhiking.

Actually both. The gauge, however, would have given an indication of
the problem earlier than the noise.

I consider them "experimental" as in "not ready for prime time." Just
like the entire G-Lader. The whole damn car was VW's beta test for the
A3 platform and as fun as it is, it shows.

If the rest of the engine is in good condition but the engine is a known
bearing-eater, wouldn't you want to know when your bearings are starting
to go so that you could replace them ASAP and prevent the necessity of
an expensive full rebuild?

Hmm, I guess those must have been recreational roads that I've been
driving all my vehicles on.

nate

 

have you ever analyzed a thrown rod? cap bolt fatigue is not bearing
failure.

as do i. and the only data you have is an acceptable range for idle,
and a range for operating rpms. there is no /real/ data like oil
pressure vs. temp, grade, "x" miles, etc. all that matters is that you
get hydrodynamic separation, and no gauge is telling you that without a
much more specific data map.

how can you tell /with/ a gauge??? fan operation doesn't show on the gauge.

so you did a controlled test comparing the two? again, bearing
replacement does nothing to cure ovalization.

so you've done controlled testing and comparisons?

no, all you're doing is stopping at the side of the road earlier than i
am. i may get home. and it's going to make no difference to repair
costs if the motor's already fucked.

"would"??? how exactly "would" a gauge prevent the bearing problem???

oh. so we can all rest easy then.

any engine that's a "known bearing eater" is a p.o.s. because it's got a
design problem. band-aiding bearings is a waste of time in that situation.

dude, everything you describe is recreational. if you have the time and
you don't price that time, go ahead and enjoy. but it's not real world,
so please don't argue as if it is. thanks.

 

But bearing failure could easily lead to increased stresses on the bolts
through several mechanisms. In fact, I owned one car that had a rod
knock that actually did throw a rod. (old beater BMW) An oil pressure
gauge would have told me much earlier that there was an issue - the car
also had an exhaust leak, and I didn't realize that there was an issue
until I had the exhaust repaired.

But you can tell easily when the OP is different than you've been lead
to expect from previous use of the car, especially when it's
significantly lower. Whether or not that actually means that the oil
film is compromised is irrelevant, the issue is that something bad has
happened. Better that you do catch it before actual mechanical damage
is done.

Easy. I look at the gauge and see if the temperature is above or below
the temperature at which the fan is supposed to activate.

Now I think you're just being deliberately obtuse. I'm talking about
sitting at a stop light. The temperature gauge starts creeping up. At
some point you should hear a "click" from the relay box, and the cooling
fan should come on. Without a gauge, however, if you don't hear that
click/whir, you don't have a clue as to whether the engine simply hasn't
heated up to the point where the fan should come on yet, or if it's
getting good and hot and there's an actual fault, either in the
thermostat or the cooling fan control circuit. *WITH* a gauge, you
aren't guessing; you KNOW.

No, I fixed an old car that according to you probably needed a full
engine rebuild.

No, as I said, I FIXED an old car that according to you needed a new engine.

It most certainly does. Regrinding a usable crank is cheaper than
buying a new one or paying to have one welded up. Resizing your
existing con rods is cheaper than buying new ones. Reboring a block is
cheaper than buying a new one. etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Again, I think you're being deliberately dumb to keep this conversation
going, for what purpose, I don't know.

well, see, generally you don't *know* that a design is a "bearing eater"
until it's been in service for quite a few years. So you might buy one
inadvertantly, based on the reliability record of its predecessors. And
repairing a problem and allowing you to continue using the machine for
many more miles without any problems is *not* a waste of time.

I'm living in a fake world now?

nate

 

So what? Why should everything be dumbed down for her sake?[/QUOTE]

You plainly don't understand marketing and sales.

You're asking the wrong question. The CORRECT question to ask is this:
why should every car be built with the 747 cockpit? Let the THREE
PEOPLE in the world who care about that, add whatever they want.

In the meantime, the REAL WORLD marketing will keep the cost of the
vehicle down by NOT adding the 747 dashboard that requires flight school
and years of training to use.

It's easier to put that years of training into a proper computer program
which will decide, properly, when something needs tended to. Design
that one time, spend the money one time, then the program can run at no
extra cost on every car that comes off the line.

 

EXCELLENT way of putting it.

 

Now I think you're just being deliberately obtuse. I'm talking about
sitting at a stop light. The temperature gauge starts creeping up. At
some point you should hear a "click" from the relay box, and the cooling
fan should come on.[/QUOTE]

Are you honestly telling me that the car buying public operates their
cars on this basis?

Fact: they don't.