how accurate are the stock guages really? my water temp guage used to stay around the halfway mark but after a cambelt and waterpump change its all over the place. sometimes halfway, sometimes just randomly dropping to nothing..its started doing this quite regularly.

 

also the oil temp guage. mines in kg/cm2 but at best reads about the 4 mark, very rarely reaching the halfway mark. and when its hot idling it shows almost nothing.

 

lastly..backfire/popping. how normal is this? mine has a decat and it pops and bangs when slowing down and occasionally when i change up. it happens at lower revs. 3k>1.5k. happens all the time. sounds good but i just wanted to know how normal this is!

 

 

btw, i have a 1991 jap import, decat, jwt chip at 14 psi and a few other basic mods.

 

cheers

 

Joe

as far as i can make out the stock gauges on the 300's are dog shite! you could try cleaning the connectors/pins to get a better contact,

 

the popping could be down to a boost leak making it run rich on over run, but u will get a bit from the decatting

i started to get pops/bangs when i installed BOVs. i think its cos it runs rich briefly when you foot off the gas. when the engine is warm and off load, the oil pressure should be comfortably to the left somewhere. from cold mine goes about 3/4 of the way to the right, and reigns in over 10 minutes of steady driving.

id have a look at the water gauge, like Forge says theyre pretty inaccurate, but they can help to identify when something's going wrong.

Yeah they suck

 

My stock water temp gauge sits bang in the middle anywhere between 50 and 100c on my aftermarket gauge

 

(saw 100c when I had a heater matrix leak on my old engine)