The Autometer Elite oil temperature gauge, like the one we installed for our transmission temp, has a stepper motor for the needle sweep. The gauge is fully configurable with peak recall and warning functions allowing you to flip the backlight color when the high and low point limits have been reached. For example, by default you want the background color of the gauge to be blue. When the car is cold, the gauge will backlight green until the oil reaches operating temperature of 180 degrees. At that point it will turn blue, the desired background color. When the car is driven aggressively and the temperature climbs past 220, the high limit for the temperature setting will change the color to red. There are all sorts of other features available on Autometer Elite gauges including data logging and pro control. The pro control will activate a switched ground output at the designated set point which could be really useful to activate a set of auxiliary fans.
Initial performance of the Stillen coolers is very impressive. Testing as they say is subjective and we haven’t re-created the scenarios in rush hour traffic that pushed the transmission temp over 220 degrees (extended times idling at 105+ outside) and the dyno runs that caused the oil temp to go over 240 degrees. However, as shown above, some days in Phoenix are still 110 degrees and the freeways often exceed the ambient air temperature in a microwave of radiation. Both temps, trans and oil, held steady at around 190 degrees on the freeway in stop and go traffic. To push the system even further we kept the car in Drive in a hot parking lot letting all the fluids bake from the heat off the asphalt for over 10 minutes.
Conclusion:
With some fresh air run back through the coolers, the temperatures went back down between 180-190 degrees for both fluids. These new Elite gauges from Autometer really look good. The only downside is even though we’ve hooked them up to the factory dimmer switch, they don’t dim at all and they are too bright at night. Autometer informed us this might be due to the way Infiniti’s dimmer works vs. the way the dimmer needs to work for their LED lighting. In the future, we’ll install Autometer’s dimmer switch and at this point we’ll call our cooling upgrades for our project complete. Until next time Happy Motoring!
1 comment
It’s a very helpful blog to know how to cooler engine oil and transmission fluid works. thanks for explaining.