2ZR Turbo Yaris

[tmontague]

Just a heads up on the glowshift gauges - I found them to be +/- 10psi/degrees in accuracy and always had electrical issues with them as they were finicky


I know the price is really tempting but in what it cost in time to try and splice their tiny gauge wires and constantly try and fix electrical issues, I would just recommend going with an AEM series gauge from the get go.

AEM gauges are far from the most expensive and they aren't the most cheapest but their harness is all plug and play with easy to remove connectors, all you have to do is splice in a ground and ignition sources power. I have found them to be +/-2 psi/degrees and have zero electrical issues since my install.

Just something to keep in mind but glowshift definitely showed their price

[06YarisRS]

Originally Posted by tmontague

Just a heads up on the glowshift gauges - I found them to be +/- 10psi/degrees in accuracy and always had electrical issues with them as they were finicky


I know the price is really tempting but in what it cost in time to try and splice their tiny gauge wires and constantly try and fix electrical issues, I would just recommend going with an AEM series gauge from the get go.

AEM gauges are far from the most expensive and they aren't the most cheapest but their harness is all plug and play with easy to remove connectors, all you have to do is splice in a ground and ignition sources power. I have found them to be +/-2 psi/degrees and have zero electrical issues since my install.

Just something to keep in mind but glowshift definitely showed their price

Thanks indeed for the input. You are right, the price is attractive, but if they are buggy, then they probably aren't what I'm looking for. That said, I just had a look and I'd be looking at $600.00+ for the few gauges I'd need. Can't see getting that past the finance committee after the $$$ I've spent already lol. I really wish that Torque could access the data I'm looking for from the ECU. I can see virtually everything in my Kia van.

Other than the inaccuracy, can you tell me a bit about the electrical problems? Is it largely bad connectors/hardware/wiring? I ran a bunch of those cheapy Chinese gauges in my old Dodge van and and the temp ones worked fine and lasted a long time - I sold the van and they were still working after a couple of years. The oil pressure ones would work for a few months and then the sender would ultimately fail. The accuracy on the temp gauges wasn't great either, but I did test them in a pot of boiling water with a digital thermometer and they were in the order of +/- 5 degrees off. I could live with that, but the again, they were like $18.00 - $20.00 each. If the Glowshift gauges are that bad, then I wouldn't be up for paying what is 3 - 4 times the price for about the same quality of product.

More thought... I'm going to be running full synthetic oil, so do I really need to know oil temps? I know that oil doesn't hang in the same temp range as water, but is it likely to get way, way above water temps? Like, in the order of 50+F degrees? With regard to oil pressure, one guy said all a gauge will do is let you watch the destruction of your turbo in realtime as by the time you lose pressure, the turbo is toast. He said that oil temp would be more valuable as it is a variable that you could control - aka, cooler. I will already have AFR, boost, water temp, intake temp etc through Torque. If I did decide to go with better gauges and had to buy them over time, which would you recommend going with first?

Thanks again,

[tmontague]

Originally Posted by 06YarisRS

Thanks indeed for the input. You are right, the price is attractive, but if they are buggy, then they probably aren't what I'm looking for. That said, I just had a look and I'd be looking at $600.00+ for the few gauges I'd need. Can't see getting that past the finance committee after the $$$ I've spent already lol. I really wish that Torque could access the data I'm looking for from the ECU. I can see virtually everything in my Kia van.

Other than the inaccuracy, can you tell me a bit about the electrical problems? Is it largely bad connectors/hardware/wiring? I ran a bunch of those cheapy Chinese gauges in my old Dodge van and and the temp ones worked fine and lasted a long time - I sold the van and they were still working after a couple of years. The oil pressure ones would work for a few months and then the sender would ultimately fail. The accuracy on the temp gauges wasn't great either, but I did test them in a pot of boiling water with a digital thermometer and they were in the order of +/- 5 degrees off. I could live with that, but the again, they were like $18.00 - $20.00 each. If the Glowshift gauges are that bad, then I wouldn't be up for paying what is 3 - 4 times the price for about the same quality of product.

More thought... I'm going to be running full synthetic oil, so do I really need to know oil temps? I know that oil doesn't hang in the same temp range as water, but is it likely to get way, way above water temps? Like, in the order of 50+F degrees? With regard to oil pressure, one guy said all a gauge will do is let you watch the destruction of your turbo in realtime as by the time you lose pressure, the turbo is toast. He said that oil temp would be more valuable as it is a variable that you could control - aka, cooler. I will already have AFR, boost, water temp, intake temp etc through Torque. If I did decide to go with better gauges and had to buy them over time, which would you recommend going with first?

Thanks again,

I definitely understand the situation regarding finances, it was one of the reasons I went with Glowshift in the first place. In hindsight waiting a few month to purchase AEM gauges would have been the best bet in my situation.

So the main issues with the GS gauges was the extremely small gauge wiring they come with. You have to run your own wires from the sender/sensor to the super tiny wires behind the gauge. You cannot find wires or connectors that small from typical go to stores. I had to double back the small gauge wire to make it crimpable. The gauge needle would randomly start to move 40psi lower or higher at random times. Then sometimes if I tapped the gauge it would do it again. I figured it must be a loose crimp so I rewired and triple checked all my connections to no avail as the issue persisted.

Instead of only having to connect a ground and a hot, you have 3 extra wires that although optional, they run the auto dimming feature and they keep the memory for what color you last chose. These always never held the color properly and would typically default to blue on 2 of the 3 gauges I had. Think of how messy the wiring was, 5 wires behind every gauge each with their own connectors, it was a mess.

AEM conveniently supplies a wire loom with proper connectors to attach the sensor to the back of the gauge. This makes them easy to disconnect when ever you need to or if you need to replace a sensor. All you have to do is splice in a hot and a ground on 2 of the wires from the loom. I have to extend a few wires to make it reach where I wanted the gauges to go, but the wire gauge is not super small so it was easy to work with and IIRC it matched the smallest gauge you can find at CT (21gauge I think?) AEM gauges have an auto sensor that dims the back light based on ambient light in the car. Much simple, cleaner and no gauge sweeping issues or weird electrical problems. Oh, and GS gauges have a little plastic button to change the back light color. Thus button is very loose and rattles consistently since day 1. All of the gauges were like that, it wasn't a one off.

Truth is a proper full syn oil can easily handle upwards of 300*F, most engineers will tell you 450-500F is its limit. Based on my 13k km UOA of 5w30 Pennzoil UP that regularily saw 295F it never degraded the oil to where it lost it's lubricity or viscocity. The whole belief that 260F is an oils upper limit and anything after that needs a cooler is outdated and obsolete with modern full syn oils.

Where temp matter is when it reduces yourt operating pressure below spec. For the 2zr according to Toyota it is 22-58 psi at 3k rpm and anything greater than 3 psi at idle.


Now to fix that you can either run a cooler or simply up a viscocity to maintain pressure, but then you would be running too high a viscocity when not on track. This is why a cooler is ideal for a car that is track driven and a DD'er only if the track pushes it out of its oil pressure specs. I actually strongly disagree with the guy that told you oil temp is more valuable than pressure and here is why:

If your engine has catastrophic failure and you loose oil at an alarming rate, neither a temp or pressure gauge will help you - well maybe a pressure gauge would, but you would have to have it set to an alarm or constantly be monitoring it every couple seconds. Oil temp only tells you the temp of the oil, not what actually matters. You will absolutely never get the oil too hot for a full syn's capability, even if you tracked the crap out of your car. You potentially could push the car/oil outside of the pressure specs if you tracked the crap of of your car.

Notice in the above, the dependant variable is pressure and it is dependant on temp. But only knowing the temp tells you nothing of the pressure. But by knowing pressure you know what is important regardless of the temp. Pressure if a product of temp. If you are going to get 1 gauge, let it be oil pressure. This will guide you in what oil viscosity you need to run (spoiler alert, I can almost guarantee you that 0w20 will be perfectly fine)

Here is why I doubt you will have an oil temp issue. Oil typically runs equal to, or 10 degrees F above coolant temp in 75F temps. Add 10F in peak summer months and subtract 10F in colder months. This is in city driving for a long time or highway cruising, even at 130 km/h. Where oil temps will slightly go up under these conditions is when you climb a long skyway bridge - or better put, any increase engine load. This is why 10 mins in to a 40 min lapping session at the track, my oil temps started to climb. Coolant would peak at 230F and oil would creep up to 285F and hand out there for the rest of the session (this was on stock cooling)

This was only seen during WOT and constantly at high rpm's. To put it in perspective I would go through 3/4 of a tank of gas during my 60km trip to the track and my 120km on the track.

You will never come close to these constant engine loads or temps on the street without getting arrested first. Even with an oil cooled turbo you still won't come close to those temps. The engine has no where near the load or demand on it. Spirited driving is still much more tame and less demanding than full out track driving.

In all honesty you could save your cash and forgo the gauges completely. It gives you info, but info you likely do not need other than for curiosity's sake. You already took care of the trans temp issue with a cooler so I can't see you having issues there. If you are worried about that than run a Redline ATF instead of the Toyota WS fluid which doesn't appear to be that robust of a fluid unlike their 0w20 oil.

Don't spec a higher weight oil unless you see pressures outside of the Toyota spec'd limits. Lower viscosity means higher flow which means more cooling. Higher viscosities increase temps. This is well documented on the gt-86 platform when people go from 0w20 to 5w30. It also likely contributed to my oil temps last track season as well.

This is my two cents based on me DDing in various temps and pushing my 2zr well past it's limit while keeping a careful eye on oil temps and pressure. I was surprised by some of the date I gathered, it wasn't what I was told or assumed.

[06YarisRS]

Originally Posted by tmontague

I definitely understand the situation regarding finances, it was one of the reasons I went with Glowshift in the first place. In hindsight waiting a few month to purchase AEM gauges would have been the best bet in my situation.

So the main issues with the GS gauges was the extremely small gauge wiring they come with. You have to run your own wires from the sender/sensor to the super tiny wires behind the gauge. You cannot find wires or connectors that small from typical go to stores. I had to double back the small gauge wire to make it crimpable. The gauge needle would randomly start to move 40psi lower or higher at random times. Then sometimes if I tapped the gauge it would do it again. I figured it must be a loose crimp so I rewired and triple checked all my connections to no avail as the issue persisted.

Instead of only having to connect a ground and a hot, you have 3 extra wires that although optional, they run the auto dimming feature and they keep the memory for what color you last chose. These always never held the color properly and would typically default to blue on 2 of the 3 gauges I had. Think of how messy the wiring was, 5 wires behind every gauge each with their own connectors, it was a mess.

AEM conveniently supplies a wire loom with proper connectors to attach the sensor to the back of the gauge. This makes them easy to disconnect when ever you need to or if you need to replace a sensor. All you have to do is splice in a hot and a ground on 2 of the wires from the loom. I have to extend a few wires to make it reach where I wanted the gauges to go, but the wire gauge is not super small so it was easy to work with and IIRC it matched the smallest gauge you can find at CT (21gauge I think?) AEM gauges have an auto sensor that dims the back light based on ambient light in the car. Much simple, cleaner and no gauge sweeping issues or weird electrical problems. Oh, and GS gauges have a little plastic button to change the back light color. Thus button is very loose and rattles consistently since day 1. All of the gauges were like that, it wasn't a one off.

Truth is a proper full syn oil can easily handle upwards of 300*F, most engineers will tell you 450-500F is its limit. Based on my 13k km UOA of 5w30 Pennzoil UP that regularily saw 295F it never degraded the oil to where it lost it's lubricity or viscocity. The whole belief that 260F is an oils upper limit and anything after that needs a cooler is outdated and obsolete with modern full syn oils.

Where temp matter is when it reduces yourt operating pressure below spec. For the 2zr according to Toyota it is 22-58 psi at 3k rpm and anything greater than 3 psi at idle.


Now to fix that you can either run a cooler or simply up a viscocity to maintain pressure, but then you would be running too high a viscocity when not on track. This is why a cooler is ideal for a car that is track driven and a DD'er only if the track pushes it out of its oil pressure specs. I actually strongly disagree with the guy that told you oil temp is more valuable than pressure and here is why:

If your engine has catastrophic failure and you loose oil at an alarming rate, neither a temp or pressure gauge will help you - well maybe a pressure gauge would, but you would have to have it set to an alarm or constantly be monitoring it every couple seconds. Oil temp only tells you the temp of the oil, not what actually matters. You will absolutely never get the oil too hot for a full syn's capability, even if you tracked the crap out of your car. You potentially could push the car/oil outside of the pressure specs if you tracked the crap of of your car.

Notice in the above, the dependant variable is pressure and it is dependant on temp. But only knowing the temp tells you nothing of the pressure. But by knowing pressure you know what is important regardless of the temp. Pressure if a product of temp. If you are going to get 1 gauge, let it be oil pressure. This will guide you in what oil viscosity you need to run (spoiler alert, I can almost guarantee you that 0w20 will be perfectly fine)

Here is why I doubt you will have an oil temp issue. Oil typically runs equal to, or 10 degrees F above coolant temp in 75F temps. Add 10F in peak summer months and subtract 10F in colder months. This is in city driving for a long time or highway cruising, even at 130 km/h. Where oil temps will slightly go up under these conditions is when you climb a long skyway bridge - or better put, any increase engine load. This is why 10 mins in to a 40 min lapping session at the track, my oil temps started to climb. Coolant would peak at 230F and oil would creep up to 285F and hand out there for the rest of the session (this was on stock cooling)

This was only seen during WOT and constantly at high rpm's. To put it in perspective I would go through 3/4 of a tank of gas during my 60km trip to the track and my 120km on the track.

You will never come close to these constant engine loads or temps on the street without getting arrested first. Even with an oil cooled turbo you still won't come close to those temps. The engine has no where near the load or demand on it. Spirited driving is still much more tame and less demanding than full out track driving.

In all honesty you could save your cash and forgo the gauges completely. It gives you info, but info you likely do not need other than for curiosity's sake. You already took care of the trans temp issue with a cooler so I can't see you having issues there. If you are worried about that than run a Redline ATF instead of the Toyota WS fluid which doesn't appear to be that robust of a fluid unlike their 0w20 oil.

Don't spec a higher weight oil unless you see pressures outside of the Toyota spec'd limits. Lower viscosity means higher flow which means more cooling. Higher viscosities increase temps. This is well documented on the gt-86 platform when people go from 0w20 to 5w30. It also likely contributed to my oil temps last track season as well.

This is my two cents based on me DDing in various temps and pushing my 2zr well past it's limit while keeping a careful eye on oil temps and pressure. I was surprised by some of the date I gathered, it wasn't what I was told or assumed.

Wow! Thanks for the detailed response, Trevor. Lots of great info here. I clearly have a few options:

1) Trans Temp Gauge, No Oil Temp Gauge, No Oil Pressure Gauge: Do an oil pressure test with a pressure gauge at the oil port and flow rate at the turbo oil feed (I have the specs required for that). If specs are good, button everything up and not worry about it again. Install the trans temp gauge and call it done. I have the fittings and it would be a simple install.

2) Trans Temp Gauge and Oil Temp Gauge: Install the trans temp gauge as above and if I go with a oil temp gauge using the bored drain plug, I'd have to go with Glowshift as they are the only ones I can see with a sensor probe narrow enough to work in the oil plug fitting that I got. The dual Glowshift gauge I posted the pic of first has full harnesses, so might be marginally better than the individual gauges from a wiring reliability standpoint. Of course, I'd run their harnesses through split loom and secure that along the way with zipties.

3) Trans Temp Gauge, Oil Temp Gauge and Oil Pressure Gauge: For the oil pressure gauge, I'd need an "X" type fitting at the oil pressure port on the engine to accommodate the oil pressure sending unit.

4) Trans Temp and Oil Pressure: as described above.

5) No gauges at all

I'm am leaning toward Option 4.

I'm really not getting the warm and fuzzies about using the oil drain plug fitting with the 3/8" female bore. If for any reason that broke off, the results could obviously be catastrophic. Because of the oil drain plug angle (pointing downward at about a 45 degree angle), it would put the sensor in a strike path if I did run over anything.

If I drop my oil pan and tap a 1/8" NPT hole, I would not be limited to the Glowshift gauges and the options would be wide open.

Decisions, decisions...