The speedo sucks !

[Mikem53]

Originally Posted by kajun

Not sure if sarcastic, or...

Just curious about all those suggesting oil temp/pressure, how many other regular road cars have you seen with these kinds of gauges? Because I know 90% of the time I'm driving this car, I'm not going to care about the oil temp or pressure. Others may be more regularly tracking the car, but the default configuration isn't built for a track car.

(not that the speedo is useful, but an oil pressure gauge would be twice as useless in my opinion.)

Edit: and not sure if I misunderstand the oil temp gauge... is that just giving a more accurate reading of the temp indicator that's on the right?

Had oil temp, oil pressure in my corvettes.. Found them very useful.
The temp gauge is coolant temp.. Oil temps are slow to follow and don't always reflect coolant temps.. Coolant temps come up quickly while oil temps are slow to follow.. I like to hit 160 oil temps before driving it hard.. Just a way to tell if your fully ready to go. As you stated... Not necessary for a normal car... But who drives this car normal?

[Mikem53]

Originally Posted by Xenocide117

The only car I've seen with oil temp/pressure was the '57 Chevy Station Wagon I drove during my senior year of high school. Would you like an engine choke as well so it can heat up in the morning?

Well.. I had them in quite a few cars and I like to see what's going on especially when driving hard.. Chokes were replaced with logic in fuel injectied cars.
They don't heat up anything.. They just provide a rich mixture to keep the car from stalling when cold..

[tomato86]

Obviously a GT-R is a hard comparison because of the cost difference, but it's really easy to just transfer some of this data from the OBD port anyways. With the Bespoke or some kind of in-house navi, they could've easily programmed it to read this data.

[bdub85]

The analog speedometer is absolutely useless. I never look at it.

[HunterGreene]

Originally Posted by Sonolin

The gt-86 doesn't have a digital?

I'm glad I don't live in japan, because I speed enough as it is!

Just the base models don't have it.

[NOHOME]

It is on the list of stupid little annoying items that keep this car from being great. Seriously, the fact that the design committee let this trough tells me that they were not fully up to the job of designing an enthusiast car.

The list of what is good about this car is plenty long, but does not really stray outside of the "Handling" category.

[Endless Mike]

Originally Posted by Mikem53

Had oil temp, oil pressure in my corvettes.. Found them very useful.
The temp gauge is coolant temp.. Oil temps are slow to follow and don't always reflect coolant temps.. Coolant temps come up quickly while oil temps are slow to follow.. I like to hit 160 oil temps before driving it hard.. Just a way to tell if your fully ready to go. As you stated... Not necessary for a normal car... But who drives this car normal?

Modern oil/coolant temp gauges are really, really poor indicators. They basically only have three positions: cold, normal, overheating. This is by design.

[HunterGreene]

Well, ok, so we have determined that the speedo is pointless (true) and that oil temp gauges may be about as useful as a coolant temp gauge.

Time to make this thread semi-constructive: What kind of gauge would you like to see in there? Fuel economy? A/F? G force (not a good idea, IMO), Multi-information cluster? Aka, something that could be changed, so you could see your tire pressure, compass heading, countdown to next service, other pertinent vehicle info, etc.

Start brainstorming!

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Gixxersixxerman

It's easy to forget and say useless when big digital numbers are easy to pick out at a glance.. If digital speed wasn't available, then it would be like every other car.. You'd be use to it after a couple days of driving

Actually if it was like every other car (no digital readout in the tach) I would be very annoyed by the speedo where it is. It would need to be in the center of the cluster for a DD (yes, I know tach is more important on a track car).

[strat61caster]

Originally Posted by HunterGreene

Time to make this thread semi-constructive: What kind of gauge would you like to see in there? Fuel economy? A/F? G force (not a good idea, IMO), Multi-information cluster? Aka, something that could be changed, so you could see your tire pressure, compass heading, countdown to next service, other pertinent vehicle info, etc.

Start brainstorming!

A screen that cycles through all of the above with a default speedo similar to current design.

/discussion.

Real world; make the speedo useful for mortals confined to sub-80 mph speeds, I don't care if it scales funny, if I'm doing ~110+ I'm not going to care if it's actually 105 or 115, the big tach in the center is nice but not realistic for 90% of drivers out there, it'd take some rearranging and research but I wouldn't be opposed to an entirely new design.

[Mikem53]

Originally Posted by Endless Mike

Modern oil/coolant temp gauges are really, really poor indicators. They basically only have three positions: cold, normal, overheating. This is by design.

My modern vette gave you readout in degrees and psi.. It's easy to implement and display.. The manufactures put it in the more expensive cars.. So they can help justify the price tag.. I'm sure this info can be tapped into via the obd2 port with the right software..

[Endless Mike]

Originally Posted by Mikem53

My modern vette gave you readout in degrees and psi.. It's easy to implement and display.. The manufactures put it in the more expensive cars.. So they can help justify the price tag.. I'm sure this info can be tapped into via the obd2 port with the right software..

Oh, for sure, the information is both there and available in pretty much any modern car, it's just not actually displayed in much of anything without aftermarket tools (be it something like a ScanGauge or one of those Bluetooth things). And it makes sense - most people are not driving cars where it matters if the engine is doing anything other than being cold, normal, or overhot. 99% of drivers really don't need to know or particularly care if their engine is a bit on the hot side, as long as it's still within normal operating temperatures.

So, basically, a *useful* temperature gauge would be better on these cars than the speedo that's currently there.

[strat61caster]

Originally Posted by Mikem53

My modern vette gave you readout in degrees and psi.. It's easy to implement and display.. The manufactures put it in the more expensive cars.. So they can help justify the price tag.. I'm sure this info can be tapped into via the obd2 port with the right software..

They add to the price tag, you can easily spend thousands of dollars on basic sensors, and then thousands more on processing them, and that's without considering that in a vehicle they have to last upwards of 2 years and 60k miles to even be considered economical. Accurate tire pressure sensors displayed in the car would have easily added a minimum $1k to this car, likely $2.5k realistically.

[SkullWorks]

you people are silly,

If the speedo was front and center you would be (i guarantee it) in here whining about the Tachometer placement, and how improper it is.

If your brain can't calibrate to the gauge on the dash...you have the problem, not the car,

I for one can't stand digital gauges and feel there is tons more class and value in an analogue gauge, this probably stems from my earlier experience with digital clusters in nissan S13's but it is reinforced by decades of beautiful gauges in sports cars and the fact that a digital gauge always looks classless when at rest, the rest of the time it is a tool, and if you know how to use a tool it works, everytime.