Replacement Gauges Mechanical vs Electric

[Vincentc]

The original helm gauges need replacement. A while back I installed mechanical oil and water gauges in the saloon as a check for the questionable helm gauges. The mechanical gauges strike me as more reliable. The existing instrument panel is difficult to access from below and I am considering mounting mechanical oil and water gauges in a separate panel. Any cautions or recommendations?
The engines are 671's.
Thanks
Vincent

 

[MVCaprice]

If you are going to redo senders and everything, I would consider switching over to NEMA 2000 based electrical instrumentation with mechanical gauges in the engine room as a backup. Once you get it on the NEMA 2k network you can view it anywhere in the boat with basically one 5 wire bus cable and virtually any Nema 2000 instrument that can read engine parameters which includes, garmin, maretron, etc. It's more involved and costly up front, but if you want guages in more than one station it starts to make more sense. You can also hook up your tank senders as well.