MG Sports Cars

The Mechanical Water Temperature Gauge on my Rover V8 (Buick 215 Manifold) just failed - I'm leaning towards replacing it with an Electronic sensor and gauge. Are there pros and cons to this change?

The capillary cable on mechanical gauges seems too fragile and inconvenient to route, so I've never installed that kind.

On my MG, I've used an air-core type electric gauge with success for over 30 years. The gauge itself, and its wiring, has been completely worry free. When I changed to a fuel-injection manifold, I needed to switch from an imperial thread sender to a metric thread sender. Finding a sender I liked with suitable output was a brief hassle. I bought several different models from NAPA, and took back the ones that seemed unsuitable after testing with ohmeter and boiling water, in my kitchen.

Stepper motor temperature gauges look nifty, but I think they cost two or three times as much as air core gauges, don't they? A digital gauge (i.e. w/ digital display) would clash with the rest of my car, stylistically.

Thanks, Curtis

I use the OEM electric sender & gauge on my 215 in my '79 B. Has worked fine for the last 22 years since the swap.

I've used the same OEM dual gage from a '67 MGB for the last 40+ years. In all that time the only failure was a break in the spiral cladding on the capillary tube where the PO had routed it against the exhaust. I screwed the broken ends back into each other and haven't seen the break since. Operation has been flawless, instant, and trouble free. Plus I get temp and oil pressure in one gage instead of two which helps a lot with dashboard real estate. Yes it is a bit more trouble routing the capillary tube when changing engines or dashboards but overall just a minor inconvenience. I used 1/8" stainless tubing for the oil pressure line and the capillary tube is certainly easier to route than that is. I also made a robust custom silicon grommet for the firewall to finally replace the sketchy original one. I like the appearance and the easy to read graduations. I can't think of a replacement I would be happier with. But of course the later gages lack the accurate scale the earlier one has and have less of a sweep. Clearly inferior, I had no issue with replacing those. That was a clear case where progress was in the wrong direction.

Jim

Yes, I love the dual oil pressure/water temp. gauge on my dad's '63 B.