Hi, I was recently at the Ferrari Museum in Maranello and took a picture from the cockpit of a 1980s Ferrari F1 car... This specific car has a turbo engine and has two gauges in the cockpit... The left one seen on this picture is obviously a turbo boost meter that measure turbo boost in bar... What about the other one ? I cannot understand what it measures in km/cm2 ??? Just curious to know... Thanks ! Image Unavailable, Please Login
Since it's a museum piece, and this was a race car, maybe these were just broken gauges stuck in the holes because they were the right size?
sure,..... but km/cm^2, distance over area? if itwas kPa or kgf or even kN. it's similar as saying miles/square inches ??? must be some inside joke or a goof.
Fuel consumption? Since it's electronic it could be calibrated for kilometers per liter of fuel, and they didn't bother to change the label.
I would guess its both the same because both gauges have the same range 0-4.5bar as 1kg/cm2 = 1bar or also = 1 atü (wich was used in the past often, today europe uses bar). For fuel pressure it would be to low if the static fuel pressure was something like 3bar plus the 3-4 bar boost it would need to show fuel pressures up to 7bar or more. Maybe they are just dont original like Dave said. The left one seem to be not mounted correct if you look at the big gap to the carbon cockpit. Because it would make more sense to have RPM + Boost in the middle of view as those two values seem to be the most important.
Before digital readout - boost and then fule consumption - had to maintain average consumption to last the distance. knob down on left side under dash controled fuel delivery - AKA Imola 1985 - Johannsen ran out of petrol on last lap.
Actually, here are some pictures of the Ferrari F1 126 C engine both stand-alone and inside the car... Check out the engineering ! On the display next to the engine it says that this engine was the inspiration for the GTO and the F40... (the exhaust manifolds and turbos though are on the outside on the GTO and F40 as opposed to the 126 C that are on the inside of the V6...) My guess is that next year is going to be very exciting in F1 as turbo engines are coming back ! Can't wait... Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I will have to agree with Dave... Obviously in a 1980s turbo F1 car you need to know 2 things : RPM and turbo boost.... My guess is that on the left side was the RPM meter (that was probably broken and replaced with another turbo boost gauge) as the fitting seems to be hastily done... Or one could argue that since the 126 C car was bi-turbo, each gauge measured one of the turbos ??? Just kidding... LOL
This is definitely correct. It is fuel consumption, but since this is an Italian car it uses Km instead of miles and cubic centimeters instead of gallons. Anyone who has owned a late 80's/90's/early 2000's BMW has one of these same types of gauges in the rev counter. Now, did the gauge give instantaneous data, or did a separate ECU it average it out? This I don't know.
How can it be showing a fuelflow / fuel amount when it is labeled with ATA (absolute pressure) wich is surely pressure and not a milage or flow. Also in () it shows kg/cm² wich is also pressure and equals bar. And you cannot show a massflow as bar or kg/cm² because that is a pressure on a given area. Here is some information on this already in 1978 suspended not si unit. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technische_Atmosph%C3%A4re , the information is in german because there is no good english version about this unit as the unit was only used in germany till 1978. So i'm 100% sure that this gauge is a pressure gauge. The only way would be to missuse the gauge and feed it with other data and you just have to ignore the printed label on the gauge?? But that sounds strange as its a formula 1 car ?
The only way a gauge such as this could possibly be useful for fuel consumption would be if the driver locked his car in on cruise control for the whole race. It's no good knowing you're doing 0.20 Klm per litre when you're accelerating and 4.00 Klm when braking, one would need the average. If there's no tacho gauge elsewhere it's most likely a replacement gauge has been put in place of the tacho.
