Car external temperature sensor location?

On a Golf GTI whose 'computer' dashboard display has failed, I have kludged a temperature solution with one of those external/internal wireless 'weather stations' that Aldi and Lidl sell.

I wrapped the external sensor in duct tape, including wire for attachment. It is now attached to an air intake just below the bumper.

It reads about two or three degrees high on a very sunny day --- I assume because the air near the road is warmer than ambient; I think it's protected from heat radiated from the road; it certainly is from direct sunlight. It reads quite high some time after I've stopped --- I guess warm air from the radiator or oil cooler.

Otherwise it performs as required (for about two years now); the sensor signals seem to have no difficulty getting inside the car. However, long wave signals for the radio controlled clock are not received inside

Best regards,

Jon C.

Reply to
Jonathan Campbell
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"Yes they do", what? Have an air mass meter? I can assure you that my system doesn't - I distinctly recall selling the one off the old system on eBay. And neither do the systems factory fitted to TVR Speed 6 engines. They too work by throttle position & lambda. When you want maximum power, the air mass meter is a choke point you could do without. The reason they're used in mass market engines is that they don't need individual setting up.

Anyway, this is way off topic now, and it seems likely that the manufacturers find it easier to use another sensor (which is why my Range Rover had about 5 engine temperature sensors...) so it was a stupid supposition on my part. :o)

Reply to
Huge

Err, no. Air "mass" meters are horrid things, and you don't want one in the airflow when tuning for maximum power.

Reply to
Huge

Huge gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

The AMM on my car provides virtually no restriction to airflow. Only a small portion of the flow is measured as it passes through a calibrated venturi parallel to the main flow.

Reply to
Adrian

Huge gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

"Yes, they do", in a "Yes, those two do have IAT sensors" kinda way.

A couple of unusual and very specialised systems which do doesn't disprove "most don't"

Reply to
Adrian

Perhaps you're thinking about the old flap valve type? Modern ones very little if any resistance to airflow.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

The air mass meter on my car has about half the cross-sectional area of the air filter or the manifold. I'd say that was offering fairly serious resistance to airflow. Fortunately third party tuners sell properly sized AMMs.

Reply to
Steve Firth

%steve%@malloc.co.uk (Steve Firth) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

...which just shows it's not an inherent issue with the concept of the AMM...

Reply to
Adrian

The inlet tract is always constricted somewhere. Removing that restriction can make the vehicle run worse. If it improves things it's a poor design.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

It's as if Harry Weslake had never been born.

Reply to
Steve Firth

You can't make generalisations like that. First you have to define what you mean by "worse".

Reply to
Huge

He did understand inlet tract tuning. You should read up on him.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Not always, in the case of the car I was driving yesterday, with ambient temperatures around 0 deg C and compacted frozen snow and ice on the road, the engine management diagnostics tool I had plugged in was showing a (true) mass air temperature of around 30 deg C.

That's what you get when you have a turbo compressing the air to approximately two atmospheres and a heap of snow blocking up the intercooler duct :)

Reply to
Mike

LOL!

Reply to
Huge

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