Van's Gauges

Are the steam gauges from Vans (Alt, ASI, ASI) thought to be of decent quality? Have builders had good experience with them? They will be a backup to a GRT EFIS, but still want good units.

Thanks,

Pete

Van's steam gauges

I've got Van's ASI and altimeter, along with a Dynon EFIS. I use the steam gauges almost exclusively because they are big and easy to see at a quick glance. The Dynon is for backup. No problems at 240 hrs with Van's steam gauges.

MAP and AMP

If you check the achives in matronics you will see a common thread of problems with the MAP and AMP gages moving when transmitting on the radio. I helped solve one builders problem by using a shielded cable and re-routing the gage wires away form the coax. It worked. Van's advice was just get use to it, it woun't hurt the gage. Really I don't want to see my needles jump every time I key the mic.

I guess people like the sea of gages look and analog faces. (I admit I got a thing for mechanical dial/hand watches.) However with the GRT EIS-4000 you get more safety with hi-lo limit warnings, compact light, and the price for the unit and all probes is very low cost. However the EIS only gives digital data and a basic CHT/EGT bar graph. Cheers George

Yep, shielded wire is the only way..

I also spoke with Van's about this guage jumping, drive you crazy issue...They DO have the "get used to it" mentality. I on the other hand got vveerrryyy tired of seeing needles jump violently like that and explaing to passengers about the crappy guages. I fixed it on my friend's 6 with shielded wire. Get yourself some stout 18 guage shielded wire to run EVERY (except the ground wire of course!) wire to both the MP and RPM guages. Ground the sheilding at BOTH ends, and leave as little unshielded wire as possible. Even after all this, the MP guage still twitched a little bit at the key of the mike, and this was fixed by wrapping heavy aluminum foil around the guage and grounding the foil! Wow, sensitive little things, huh?
Glen

Re: the van's Map jumping around
Have you tried putting a 100 mF cap across the signal wires. I don't have these guages, but it might be worth a shot at filtering out that high frequency noise.

Re: the Van's airspeed and altimeter
I wasn't expecting much in terms of accuracy, but I just had a full pitot static test done. The guy doing the test was very impressed with both guages, they were very close to perfect across the entire range of operation.

Van's gauges

I had a panel full of Van's gauges. At around 400 hours the oil pressure crapped out (on base leg to Oshkosh last year), the the MAP failed - it had always had the PTT twitch, I then found out the CHT was reading 40 or 50 F low. So I installed an EIS 4000 and am very happy with it.

I have left the fuel gauges in (I know how they lie to me), and did not have any problems with the voltmeter or oil temperature, but the went anyway. I now have 5 empty 2 1/4" holes in the panel. Van's suggested I send the gauges back and they would look at them (haven't done that yet).

The next airplane will have an EIS4000 from the start - 4xCHT & 4xEGT tells you so much more about what your engine is doing.

Pete