At 06:19 PM 5/13/2010, David White wrote:
>Has anyone every come up with a nifty way to convert the temp gauge on
>a watercooled vanagon to an audible alarm when the engine starts
>getting towards overheating? How about simply moving the red blinking
>light to someplace more visible like in the line of sight of the
>driver? I need such a device so that I can take a nap while my wife
>does some of the driving.

Why just the temp gauge?  Does your wife selectively ignore
it?  *All* the warning lights on the Vanagon are stop-right-now
emergencies.  Of course if it's a 2.1l the oil light will beep at you
if you're going over 2000 rpm.

The light could be replaced with a brighter flasher, or with a *much*
brighter steady light, and/or it could be moved into  the warning
panel.  All of these would involve opening the gauge or adding
independent circuitry on the back. Likewise the other two could be
replaced with "nice and bright" diffused LEDs from the current Radio
Shack assortment which contains four of them, or with "painful at
night" clear eye-stabbers that are pretty hard to ignore.

I could build (for myself) fairly easily a circuit that would sound a
warning for any or all of these lights, but it would be kinda
expensive to pay me to build one for you.

It *might* be completely practical to simply wire a piezo buzzer
across each light -- would depend on the draw of the buzzer.  I think
RS may have a buzzer with a control lead, which could be even simpler
to wire in with a few diodes and would have no chance of overloading
the circuits.

Yours,
David