What do you have to do to hook one of these boyz up? Is it really needed? I was in summit looking at them. The mechanical on e is like 35 bucks but the electrical is 190.00 wassup with that?

 

The mechanical ones are cheaper only if you're mounting them outside of the car (not a good idea to have fuel going into the pass. compartment).

They can be mounted inside the car but you will have to buy an isolater which is mounted in the eng. compartment. You need a steel braided line going from your fuel rail to the inlet of the isolater and another steel braided line going from the outlet of the isolator to your mechanical guage which you can mount inside. The line between the isolator and guage will have a non-flammable liquid inside it (usually coolant) and that will give you the reading on the guage once the isolator sees pressure from the fuel on the inlet side.

By the time you factor the cost and complexity in wanting to do a mechanical FP guage inside the car it works out to be almost the same as getting the newer electric FP guages.

According to autometer, these are their new line of full sweep electric guages that use servo motors inside the guage to give the most accurate readings possible, and they are easier to install.

I've done the inside mechanical FP setup before on my Mustang I used to own. It was a pain and to me it was never really reading accurately as it was difficult to get the coolant into the line without any air bubbles (which will cause the guage to read off).

I did the newer setup with my "project sleeper" car and it was so much easier and better to install and works great. The newer electric FP guages come with a sending unit, a big long honking harness and all the little bits and pieces to put it together. Basically you mount the sending unit in the engine compartment (somewhere solid as it is a pretty big unit, I fabbed up a bracket to mount it on the firewall), attach your adapter fittings and steel braided line to it (this area you need to research to find out what you need) the line you connect to your fuel rail at the other end, then mount your guage in the car wherever you want to put it and plug one end of the harness into the guage and the other end into the sending unit (the plugs are like GM weatherpack plugs and will only plug into their proper ends). You then have to hook up two wires (ign. 12V and ground) and you're done. To light it up you do a separate harness (ground and 12V lighting) and that's it.

They aren't cheap but when you see the quality the guages are and the harness and sending unit you'll understand why they charge what they charge for them. They also know that to do the same deal with a mechanical setup inside the car it works out to be the same so maybe in a way they have you either way. If you can get by with the amount it costs to do the setup in the car go the electric route, easier and less hassle to run wiring than to run tubes and braided lines in your car.