Heh heh! Actually, its because I have a rather large tool chest in the right corner of the garage next to my air compressor. I need as much room as possible to open the hood, have space to pull out the tool chest drawers, and still have plenty of room to work in. The tennis ball puts my back bumper about 2-3 inches from the garage door and gives me maximum work space. My wife, actually has an easier time on her side of the garage... her minivan is much shorter than the truck!

 

So what is a better monitor to protect your engine?

A wideband or a fuel pressure gauge?

I need to buy one or the other.

 

Holy Gauges Batman !

I've got Fuel press, Boost, and af/ratio. I can record my passes with this setup so I don't have to watch them while I drive.

 

Wideband, if you lose fuel pressure, you will see your truck run super lean almost instantly once the fuel rail is dry. You will even see how lean/rich you run when you have good fuel pressure too due to tuning.

 

EGT (pyro), fuel pressure or wide band O2, any of these will do to tell you if there's a problem causing lean conditions (assuming you have it tuned right in the first place, though I think fuel pressure would be least useful of the three. If your MAF is off kilter you won't see it on the fuel pressure gauge but you will with a wide band or pyrometer. If you have enough spare capacity in the fuel system, I kind of feel the fuel gauge simply becomes eye candy (it does come in handy for tweaking tunes though). If you're running marginal fueling capacity... the smart money says to fix the capacity rather than monitor for failure. Of the three, wideband is going to be the fastest indicator of a lean condition.

 

A functional fuel pressure gauge is VASTLY more important than a wideband AFR gauge. My friend will run his a 8-second turbo car without the wideband hooked up...never without the fuel pressure gauge working. The AFR gauge tells you nothing about the health of the fuel pump(s) or possible problems with the rest of the fuel system. Wideband is only good if you are datalogging for tuning purposes (and without a way of monitoring fuel pressure a dangerous gauge to rely on solely), other than that you can pretty much ignore it. Fuel pressure gauge (particularly one with an electronic sender you can datalog from) will give you a much more reliable way of gauging (pun?) health of your fuel system (and subsequently the health of your motor). The AFR will not be the fastest monitor for failure as it won't react to a fuel pressure drop until AFTER the motor is going lean. Can dig up this question on NLOC, Yellow Bullet, and many others and get the same response from the veteran members: Wideband AFR for tuning and something pretty to look at, Fuel pressure for safety.


Oh, and I've had my F-150 running with nearly 14 psi on the stock motor for 4 years now and I've never put a AFR gauge in it. I have an Innovate kit for that information when I need it. The first gauge I look at when turning the key is the Fuel Pressure and it's the one foremost in my line of sight. Nice to have both, the fuel pressure gauge should be priority though.

 

Fuel pressure X2

I have my pressure gauge set up with a red lead,at 3psi my second pump kicks in and the light lights up telling me that my second pump is working.
I do not run an AFR ether.
I have a good tuner that is local and don't do any of that myself. Therefore I have no need for one.

Phil

 

Your fuel pressure can be 10,000lbs and the thing still run lean for other reasons. You need a wideband. Fuel pressure is only a part of the process. The wideband monitors the whole.

 

Frankly, if safety is a concern then any sort of non-audible gauge is not the way to go. You can't watch it constantly on the road, maybe on the track but not on the streets. Best thing is an electronic unit which sounds an audible alert (Dash DAQ, Dash Hawk, etc.) the moment something goes above or below the values you set. You may not see a gauge the instant a problem starts to creep up, but you will hear an audible alert no matter which way you are looking. I have alerts set up for oil temp, fuel pressure, tranny temp, coolant temp, A/F, torque converter slip when locked up, and speed traps/red light cameras (I loaded a custom POI set for this into my GPS unit), plus I turn on other alerts depending on what I'm doing.

For 14 lbs, an 8 second turbo'd car, a modified fuel system or a 2004-2008 running 425+ RWHP (which likely means a modified fuel system) a pressure gauge certainly would be a good thing but the average guy with a 2004-2008 F150 isn't running more than 8-9lbs boost or more than 370-380 RWHP. I've yet to hear about a fuel pump failure on a Roushcharged 2004-2008 F150 though I will admit its not outside the realm of possibilies. A fuel pressure gauge alone is not enough. If you have a problem with one bank, or single injector it won't tell you a thing about it but an AFR gauge will if you locate the bung where it reads both banks (or in my case, one on each side). Both an AFR and a fuel pressure gauge... that's a winning combination.

If you can only get one or two, don't go with them at all... get an electronic unit that can gauge 500+ parameters and will give audio alerts. I got the Dash DAQ after the pod gauges, but if I had to do it over I'd have only the Dash DAQ. It has 2 inputs for analog so you can hook up anything the PCM won't tell you, plus you can hook up USB phigets for even more analog logging capabilities. Mounting it doesn't look as nice using the universal mounts they come with, but if you modify an Edge tuner holder like I did it'll look stock. One really cool USB phiget I plan to get is a G-force meter. I have P-tech g-force meter now, but you can't look at it when you're holding a corner really fast. Seat of the pants and experience is good for knowing when you're pushing it too far, but an audible alert when you exceed a specified lateral G force is even better! Nice thing is for the price of the Dash DAQ you also get a multi-media player for MP3s, Windows media files and video!

GPS is extra with the DD, but worth it. It can log GPS data while on a track, so you know your cornering and straight line speeds, where you're slowing down, etc.

 

Honestly I would buy both guages and a tripple pod pillar.

 

Looks like I opened a pile of worms here.

I have another question though.

If you loose fuel pressure how long would you actually have before the motor gets lean?

Half a second? One second?

I agree that a fuel pressure gauge would be the first thing to indicate low pressure compared to a WideBand but is the time delay enough that anyone could shut it down faster than if they were monitoring A/F ratio's with a wideband?

 

First of all....

An 8 second turbo car is going to be running more then 14lbs... More like 25+

2nd, fuel pressure gauge will show problems in the fuel system. It does and WILL happen. I had my FACTORY fuel pump hose SPLIT on me while on the dyno. If it wasn't for that...well ya know.

Wideband is a great tool also. If you can afford it get it. Like people have said, you can go lean for other reasons. On my truck I saw no need to have one for a daily.

In my viper my wideband is an essential part of my VEC 3 engine management and Trick Nitrous Controller. It's also a Heads/Cam/300rwhp pill. I need that safety, but my computer will shut down the nitrous/adjust fuel management or even shut down the engine completely if needed to save it.

 

More like 22 psi at most with that car.


Anyway, a wideband is secondary to a proper functioning fuel pressure gauge. My fuel pressure gauge is well within my peripheral vision and a little green LED that lights up when everything is good right next to it. If that LED stutters or goes out, I dump the throttle...easy. Fuel system with a boosted vehicle is pretty much the last word. An AFR gauge won't tell you if it's healthy (as recently stated there ARE other things that can affect it other than fuel pressure and often give false readings), a fuel pressure gauge will. I've seen clogged filters, loose relays, vapor lock, weak primary/secondary pump issues, bad or poorly sourced FP regulators, etc with a fuel pressure gauge (or two). I've said that having both is ideal but if you HAVE to have one or the other then the fuel pressure gauge is your man. Then you just save up for a nice stand-alone wideband setup. I know guys who've blown $50,000+ mountain motors relying on widebands thinking they can substitute for fuel pressure monitoring. They can't. They never will either. When good EFI tuners told me a good fuel pressure gauge was "an absolute must have"...I listened.

 

Have you ever drivin an 8 second car?

Hell I was boosting 25psi on my little 2.3 turbo motor:o Ofcourse when it comes down to it, boost pressure is irrelevant. An argument I don't even bother having anymore on this forum.

 

Unfortunately, many folks don't know boost is not a measure of air volume and you can talk to them until you're blue in the face and they won't understand. You have to pick your battles with that argument... determine if they have a sufficient IQ first!