Interesting BMW mod

[Doc Evil]

It's Witchcraft!



Doc

[scoubix]

I know you guys (electronics gurus) like to try things around, but I'm not too sure this research, if conclusive, should be made available to the general public :-)
I mean, we all know that the needle should not deviate from the middle position, otherwise there's an issue (and a serious one), so if it deviates now people will start worrying when there might be no reason to.
Let's say the middle position is recalibrated for 90°, if temp goes to 95-97 then the needle would rise and people would worry, although it's perfectly fine to reach these temps on a KV6...
Furthermore the average operating temp varies from engine to engine (cooler on CDT than on petrol) and from car to car. So hard to calibrate for everyone to get a proper readout.
My guess is the Gaydon engineers had a perfectly valid reason to design it as is...

[klarzy]

Originally Posted by scoubix

I know you guys (electronics gurus) like to try things around, but I'm not too sure this research, if conclusive, should be made available to the general public :-)
I mean, we all know that the needle should not deviate from the middle position, otherwise there's an issue (and a serious one), so if it deviates now people will start worrying when there might be no reason to.
Let's say the middle position is recalibrated for 90°, if temp goes to 95-97 then the needle would rise and people would worry, although it's perfectly fine to reach these temps on a KV6...
Furthermore the average operating temp varies from engine to engine (cooler on CDT than on petrol) and from car to car. So hard to calibrate for everyone to get a proper readout.
My guess is the Gaydon engineers had a perfectly valid reason to design it as is...

I quite agree with most of your statment Scoubix, but if the Gaydon guys got it 100% right then you could see an overheat coming much quicker then the "oops too late" we sometimes see today...
if the option is there of a spot on readout and it can be coded for the best resolution on each engine type (even if that is only a better readout to the optimal rinning temp being the centre mark), then some owners of more vunerable engines may well want it...

it is an interesting challenge any roads.. and not compulsary of course... and you can always set back to standard if you sell the car on.

[Ps3000]

I agree with Klarzy. I recall Ford temp gauges in the 90s having "norm" printed across a large part the central section of the scale, presumably to indicate that a certain amount of variation wasn't a cause for concern.

The apparently analogue linear gauge in our cars is highly counter-intuitive to the casual observer, a gradual rise in temperature towards an overheating situation generally being (not)indicated followed by a sudden massive swing to the top. Imagine if they made the fuel gauge work in the same way!

In fact, in my not very humble opinion, this gauge is worse than not having a gauge as it provides an illusion of an indication that it's not really providing - evidently some of the BMW guys agree.
Once you know how it works, it's pretty much worthless.
It might as well be deleted, leaving just the warning light, since it provides similar binary type information.

My experience of continuing cooling problems almost since getting the car has been that the ipk based digital reading is useful, the gauge isn't, however, it's a faff setting the ipk every time. I have considered one of the aftermarket k-bus based digital gauges, but I don't like the fitting options, being too low down, nor the digital readout . What I'd really like is an analogue gauge that just tells the truth instead of trying to sanitise the information. I can cope with the idea that I'll see some variation without running to the hills screaming.

By the way - I don't believe this was designed in Gaydon, but in Munich. If it was such a great system, why didn't the 25, ZS, Freelander etc use it? It was just adopted for simplicity of using the BMW electronics, like a number of other BMW derived things on the car.