Test and Measurement Forum

Hi,
I'm working with air cooled petrol engines fitted to road vehicles.
I'd like to log the following data:

Cylinder Head Temp #1
Cylinder Head Temp #2
Cylinder Head Temp #3
Cylinder Head Temp #4
Ambient Temp
Exhaust Gas Temp
Oil Temp
Inlet Air Temp

Additionally I may also want to log:

Oil Pressure
Dewpoint
Engine RPM

Could you offer some advice as to what datalogger I would require to do this?

Also, I'm not sure whether I should be using insulated K type thermocouples for the temperature measurement?

Thanks,

Russell

The 8 temperature channels can be measured using a TC08 (which has 8 channels) and thermocouples (standard rather than insulated should be OK).

For the other parameters, the answer depends a bit on where you are picking up the signals from / what sensors you are using. Depending on the age / technology of the engine you may have an oil pressure switch or a sensor - if its a sensor with a voltage output then it can be fed into one of our voltage input data loggers (eg USB ADC11 or ADC20).

For the RPM, again this depends a bit on how you are picking this up. One way would be to feed the pulse signal from the crank sensor or pickup used for the RPM counter into a frequency to voltage converter chip and then into one of the data loggers above.

By dewpoint I assume you are looking at ambient temperature and humidity - if so have a look at the Humidiprobe.

All the above loggers can be used at the same time on the same PC under PicoLog.

Regards
Alan