I hear ya dan, but...

It’s 2020. The vans are a lot older now. Maybe you rebuild or pop in a new engine every ten years , even so I’d have gauges installed to monitor that :-)

I really appreciate having oil pressure and temp gauges in my van. I can decide to stop and rest the van a while when on summer trips on logging roads. If I know I have a steepish and slow big hill ahead I find a place to stop for a while, have a bite to eat, look around, let the van cook a wee bit, before stressing it on the climb.

I suppose I’m fully in the gauge camp. I’ll stake my claim that oil pressure and temp gauges are essential. 

As Luther sort of said: here i stand, I can go no further.
Well, maybe that’s not the right quote to bring up with old vans :-)

Alistair 
> On May 19, 2020, at 8:22 AM, Dan N <dn92610@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> well... my thinking (and I may be wrong)... on vanagon the more information
> the driver has (oil temp/oil pressure/coolant temp/voltage etc..) the
> worrier he is...
> 
> when I had a 1978 air cooled barn door, and later a 1985 1.9 wbx... I know
> nothing except oil/filter/spark plugs change... and I was not worried...
> and now I am worrier than before because of those infos...
> 
>> On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 5:30 AM kenneth wilford (Van-Again) <
>> kenwilfy@comcast.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Here is my take on the oil pressure gauge situation.  You are driving down
>> the road.  You have an oil pressure gauge installed.  Every so often you
>> take a look at your gauge to see what your oil pressure is doing.  It has a
>> "normal" range when at cold idle, hot idle, 65 mph down the interstate.
>> You figure out what this "normal" range is, and then file that away in your
>> brain.  One day you look down and something is not right.  Oil pressure is
>> much lower than it normally is and you react by pulling over and checking
>> things out.  Or over time you start seeing a trend where the oil
>> pressure isn't the same at start up, or takes longer to register at start
>> up, etc.  In effect you establish a "normal" and then when things are no
>> longer the way they should be, you can intervene in some way (pull over,
>> add oil, replace oil, replace filter, etc).
>> Accuracy, really has very little to do with it if we are being honest.
>> That is why in Ford pickup trucks and Jeeps, they have an oil pressure
>> gauge that is essentially a dummy light.  If your oil pressure is above a
>> certain value, the oil pressure "gauge" goes to the middle and everything
>> looks fine.  When oil pressure goes below a certain range, the oil pressure
>> gauge goes to zero to scare you so you will pull over and investigate.  99%
>> of the people out there this is what they are actually looking for even if
>> they don't realize it.  The folks that call me wanting to buy our oil
>> pressure gauge kit, want to be able to disable that pesky oil buzzer system
>> in the cluster.  Or if they don't, that when that buzzer is going off, they
>> can look at the gauge to see if it is a false alarm or not instead of
>> having to pull over and unload everything over the engine while on a trip.
>> They aren't really looking for accuracy.  They aren't engine builders, or
>> engine testers, they are drivers and sometimes simple is better.
>> 
>> Our kit is simple.  You remove your oil filter, you install the adapter,
>> reinstall the oil filter,  you run a premade length of wire to the front
>> and plug it into the gauge that you mount on the dash.  You still have to
>> wire the lighting and the power and ground but that is it.  Very simple and
>> easy.  Is there a "better" place in the system to look for oil pressure for
>> accuracy?  Possibly.  But is that what you really need?  Most likely not.
>> You just want to be able to drive, enjoy your van, and not panic if the oil
>> light starts to flicker for no reason or the buzzer starts to go off due to
>> a flaky dash cluster, or bad wire.  Or you want to see trends over time.
>> Either way you can do that just as well with my kit.
>> 
>> The kit is reasonably priced for what it is, and how it takes most of the
>> work and complexity out of doing this, so more people can do it and feel
>> confident in getting it done.  You don't have to be an amazing mechanic to
>> install this, just competent.
>> 
>> So if you need accuracy for the sake of accuracy then you might, maybe get
>> more accuracy out of a VDO sensor and gauge but you are going to pay a lot
>> more for it.  And then you are still going to have to rig up an oil line,
>> and stuff and things that will look like a rig up at the end of the day not
>> matter how good of a job you do.
>> 
>> Just my two cents.
>> 
>> Ken
>> 
>>