One thing I hope the Camaro doesn't stray from is guages that WORK. A pet peeve of mine with many cars, especially with Fords is dummy guages. Having a working oil and temp. guage is an essential to any muscle car, and I certainly hope GM doesn't end up just giving us gas and dummy temp guages. Does anyone know anything about this?

Jason

 

www.autometer.com

 

What do you mean, dummy gauges?

I've seen lots of cars that didn't have an oil pressure gauge at all, and if that's what you mean, then I agree. I think that all cars should have, at the very least, a speedometer and tachometer, plus fuel level, oil pressure, water temperature, and voltage. Forced induction cars should have a manifold air pressure (boost) gauge as well.

 

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "dummy gauges." On my Grand Prix, I have a digital gauge that supposedly measures the supercharger boost in a short of bar graph but doesn't ever give an actual psi number. I kind of consider that a "dummy gauge", not sure if that is what you are thinking of well. That kind of drives me nuts as I would rather have a real gauge on it, especially if I were to swap pulleys or something and upped the boost amount.

 

We've always called the light that pops on to tell you to check something a 'dummy guage'.

I assumed he meant he didn't want JUST the light to warn about something, he wanted actual guages.

 

Oh. I've always heard those called "idiot lights."

 

You know what, I think I got confused. (Not very hard to do.)

You're right, they're idiot lights. It's just been so long since I heard that term that I thought it's what he meant by dummy guages.

Now I have no idea what he was talking about. LOL

 

A dummy guage to me is a guage that works but only stays in the middle and doesn't have any numbers. Ford has used dummy guages for probably 10+ years now. A Ford oil pressure for example guage registers in the middle of the guage as long as there is 7psi of pressure. It will stay there at hot idle or if the motor is getting 80+psi at WOT when cold.

This is the kind of "dummy guage" I despise.

Jason

 

I agree with this. I want to KNOW what's happening, not just that it's in an acceptable operating range

 

Yeah, hopefully it won't have those. I want to see actual, specific measurements, otherwise, the gauge serves no purpose to me.

 

Oh, yeah, that sounds crappy. I've never owned a Ford, so I've never had to deal with one of those.

 

Yeah, the 99-02 F-Bods had "dummy" temp gauges. When the car is 'warmed up' it reads 210. I have a 160 stat and it still reads 210*. Even when I shot the engine w/ a laser T-stat and it was reading 150* on the heads after a 15 mile drive on a 90* day.

 

Mine seems to read accurately.

You know it's the temperature of the coolant, not of the engine or any part of the engine, right?

 

I'm almost positive he's right... I thought the oil pressure gauge was a dummy gauge on late LS1's too though. Does anyone with an LS1 car have a gauge that reads anywhere other than right in the middle? It seems like everyone I've driven has been 210 all the time, even right as the fan kicks on...

 

As stated in my post above, yes, I do.

I haven't confirmed the accuracy with an aftermarket gauge, but it reads exactly how I would expect it to. It goes down when the fans turn on, it takes longer to warm up on cold days. It may be lacking in precision, but it's no dummy gauge.