Where to buy an EGT guage

Available any autobarn, supercheap etc etc

It tells you when you are about to melt pistons and other things. (EGT's run up 500+ degrees)

Valueable?? VERY MUCH.

Gday mate,

I would, but that's just me. Bit of extra insurance. There has been a couple of quite lengthy posts regarding the pyro. In my case, the motor runs at 1/4 the whole time, whilst the turbo gets hot (600 degrees in some cases).

VDO do a great 52mm gauge, and a member from this site has digital pyros, look in the business advertising section, his name is Ian.

Good luck!

Chris.

G'day Floyd,
I've been navel-gazing about this for a couple of months now. I REALLY do want a gauge like this for my Nissan, but there's a couple of things holding me back.
Both Truckster and Chris have mentioned that temps can get to 500+. I think I'm correct in saying that they both have their sender units mounted downstream of the turbo, on the exhaust somewhere.
Ian Peterson, from Thermoguard in Alice Springs, strongly recommends mounting the sender BEFORE the turbo, in the exhaust manifold. At that point, temps can get up to 720+. His reasoning is that once the gases have been through the turbo, they have actually cooled down quite a bit and you are not getting a true reading of what your EGT actually is.
I'm not gunna dispute that, but i just can't bring myself to tapping a threaded hole in the exhaust manifold, in case some of the metal finds it's way into the turbo (not good at all!!!).
Ian's solution to this is to unbolt the turbo from the manifold before drilling and tapping, covering up the inlet to the turbo with plastic/cardboard or similar and doing a thorough vaccum and cleanup before re-bolting back together.
Sounds real good, but i don't trust myself to do it and am not sure I would trust any local spanner man to do it either.
As I sdaid, if I mount it below the turbo, then it could be as useless as an ashtray in a motorbike, cos the reading could be a couple of hundred degrees shy of what is really happening.

Hi Floyd,

I see Roachie has already mentioned me in dispatches. For my take on the EGT issue, and kit details, please see my website. For other info, please have a look at this excellent article Why EGT is Important from Gale Banks Engineering in the US.

Despite Roachie's misgivings, plenty of people have drilled and tapped their manifolds very successfully and without any damage to the turbo. It just needs to be done with due care and cleanliness.

While I certainly do recommend sensing upstream of the turbo, downstream sensing is not exactly "as useless as an ashtray on a motorbike"! It's also true that the gas temperature can drop up to 200 C across the turbo - this is the energy being extracted that drives the compressor wheel. The problem is that the temp drop is largely unpredictable and varies from one engine/turbo combination to the next. And it is the upstream temperature that components like the turbine housing, wastegate valve and turbine blade tips 'see'.

So, a downstream measurement needs to be used conservatively - say an upper limit of 500 or 550 C so that, if the drop is up towards 200 C, the turbo components will not be subjected to temps above 720 C for very long.

Hope this helps,
Ian