No temp gauges in new cars

[TominMO]

Why is this? Just to save a buck on manufacturing? Or are new cars not as prone to overheating, or do they have fail-safes to prevent it somehow?

[ryanprins13]

The temp gauges on the dash of most 2000's cars were pointless anyway. Designed to move to the middle accuritly but not go over the midle untill you were really, really overheating. A temp gauge that moves scares people. No gauge is less like lying. People dont want to know whats going on with their car. Oil pressure gauges are important too and mostly dissapeared a while back of stock clusters.
Many new vehicles have the information on the dash. So if you hit a button 10 times it will display your coolant temp instead of the odometer.

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[Dragonhealer]

The modern car and owner are "it's all about the owner" a gratification pod that would drive you there itself if it could. Instead of "here is a tool, how well can you use it? Your input decides the outcome.outcome.,

[ryanprins13]

The modern car and owner are "it's all about the owner" a gratification pod that would drive you there itself if it could. Instead of "here is a tool, how well can you use it? Your input decides the outcome.outcome.,

Yes, you can see that in everthing today. Anything mechanical or working gets a cover so no one has to see it. Everything has to be quiet and require as little user input as possible. To the point where there is software to guess what your going to say so you dont have to finish typing your sentance...
Its called the automation paradox. We make a machine to do something more eficciently than us or where a human can make a mistake. They work and we forget how to do it ourselves. The machines need to be monitored by humans still, but the more reliable the machine the less we pay attention. That leads to catastrophic failures. We make machines to monitor machines but at the end of the day a person still needs to monitor those machines and the better they work and the more complex they are the less likely we are to notice something going wrong. In the case of cars now if youve worked as a mechanic thats easy to see. many drivers can hear or feel major things failing but not have a clue that its bad or dangerous or expensive to let it get worse. Whereas 60yrs ago most 10yr old kids knew better....

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[ryanprins13]

I still remember working in an autobody shop and opening the hood of a new mercedes. You couldnt see the engine at all. If you bent over and got on just the right angle you could sort of see some pulleys, but the entire thing had a plastic cover over it. Underneath was all covers too.
Also no oil dipstick. Theres a light on the dash for that...

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[ryanprins13]

Why is this? Just to save a buck on manufacturing? Or are new cars not as prone to overheating, or do they have fail-safes to prevent it somehow?

As far as failsafes i know semis will shut down before they overheat and i have heard some new diesel pickups will cut power when they get too warm. Real sports cars like a lambo will also but i havent heard of that feature in regular vehicles.
I dont believe they are less prone to overheat but it may depend what you are comparing them too. Everything has to be in perfect working order for them to not overheat. I believe many older vehicles could have a fan quit or be a gallon low on coolant and you could still make it to where you needed to be if you were careful.

Nowadays everything is about fuel efficiency. Cooling systems are carefully calculated. Not to cool perfectly of course though. The designers have a typical commute to work with to meet fuel efficiency requirements and a heaviest acceptable use that the cooling system will work (eg: 18% grade, 800 pound load, 100f ambient, 50mph for 5 min not going over 210f coolant temp).
For the fuel economy tests those are short drives. (See europian drive cycle) Fuel economy is worse when the car is cold and ANY additional coolant or oil volume increases the warm up time and decreases fuel economy.
Thats why coolant volumes and radiator sizes are so much smaller than they used to be. Engineers come up with the hardest use that they think is acceptable (which is far less that pushing the vehicle to the max) and design a cooling system just adequite to serve that, keeping coolant volume as low as possible so they can meet cafe requirements while adding power doors and windows, 50 airbags, self braking and having 300 hp in a compact car...

I can promise you a new 1 ton pickup with 850ft pounds of torque cannot put out that 850ft pounds for 15min straight without overheating.

My 2002 honda civic with 115hp and 'honda reliability' in perfect working order cant pull a 5x8 uhaul trailer for 5 minutes on flat ground without overheating (at highway speeds). A half hour drive saw oil temps over 250f and a blown head gasket. (Engineers decided no one would do that i suppose)

My 25yr old abused festiva with 465,000km and a skinny manual radiator with most of the fins flattened that was likely half clogged towed the same trailer 2 or 3 hours through steep hills in warmer weather without overheating. Oil temps didnt get above 220f even at 5000rpm up long hills.
Must be because the festiva wasnt designed to be fuel efficient...


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[bravekozak]

If any manufacturer installed a vacuum gauge, their customers would probably suffer a heart attack due to all of the movement going on.

[TominMO]

If any manufacturer installed a vacuum gauge, their customers would probably suffer a heart attack due to all of the movement going on.

:-)

My 2002 honda civic with 115hp and 'honda reliability' in perfect working order cant pull a 5x8 uhaul trailer for 5 minutes on flat ground without overheating (at highway speeds). A half hour drive saw oil temps over 250f and a blown head gasket. (Engineers decided no one would do that i suppose)

My 25yr old abused festiva with 465,000km and a skinny manual radiator with most of the fins flattened that was likely half clogged towed the same trailer 2 or 3 hours through steep hills in warmer weather without overheating. Oil temps didnt get above 220f even at 5000rpm up long hills.
Must be because the festiva wasnt designed to be fuel efficient...

I pulled a 2000# trailer from OR to VA with my 1990 Subaru Loyale FI 5-speed 4WD. Luckily the clutch was up to the job--crossing the Rockies on I-70 at Vail, CO in 1st gear! :-) It had 90hp @ the crank and weighed ~2300# empty. It was also stuffed full of boxes. There were no overheating issues on that trip. Those cars came with SIX gauges, the usual four plus oil pressure and ammeter.

My Festy has more like 105 crank hp (B6 SOHC with Dickmeyer head) and weighs 500# less, and I have the dual-row rad on it. No heating issues with it even on the hottest summer day, as long as I unblock the driver side grill and bumper.

[reddragon]

I purchased a couple of digital temp guages to monitor intake temps for about $3 each from ebay, singapore.

Was pleasantly surprised at accuracy and refresh rate - 0.2 seconds.
Red for just after turbo Blue for after intercooler and water/meth

[Rick the Quick]

But a 2017 Nissan Versa with the variable speed transmission comes with a tachometer! I'm just wondering why.

[Eviljimchicken]

But a 2017 Nissan Versa with the variable speed transmission comes with a tachometer! I'm just wondering why.

So you can make sure it still doesn't have gears?

[Rick the Quick]

My '52 Chevy Bel Air with the all "new" 235 cubic inch 6 cylinder came with the following gauges : speedometer (went to 100mph I believe), fuel, water temp and ammeter. The 235 engine had the new style insert bearings!, put out around 95 HP from 3.8 liters for a top speed of 90 on a good day. When pulling a good hill (like Labajada Hill) it would very easily boil the 4 gallons plus coolant that it carried. On the plus side if the pavement leveled off and you ran her at 60 she would cool down very quickly. I think they only ran about 6 lbs of pressure at the radiator cap.

[getnpsi]

Fly by 100's of wires. Thinking back many of us never added gauges to vehicles until we experienced an unfortunate failure where it may or may not have even helped. I will only reuse a thermostat and rad cap with an aftermarket gauge installed for example.