I have a wish to upgrade the panel with oil and water gauges. I have one and the harness but not sure what engine it came from but is very similar to the one for the D2-55. I will need to fit senders for the gauges but any advice how to upgrade appreciated.
I haven't upgraded the panel, but looked into it, and on my MD22 (non-turbo), the senders do not need changing - they have both open/close contacts for alarms as well as resistance ones for gauges. It's even already on the wiring loom - so you can tap into there right behind your existing panel.
If your gauges are from a different panel, you need to check if they're compatible with your senders though. If they aren't it might be easier/cheaper to sell the fancy Volvo panel and get single gauges matched to your senders instead.
thanks for the reply - how do I check for compatibility of gauges? (they are standard 12 volt VP) Do I understand that if they are compatible all I would have to do is to join the gauge wires with the appropriate alarm/light wires and not have to fix anything to the engine?
Yes, you just wire them up. You can check by looking up the senders. None of them are made by Volvo, and the ones of mine I looked at had VDO or Bosch numbers on them (forgot which) that should lead you to the spec sheets.
As far as I'm aware, there are two types of instruments, the old fashioned ones which indiviual senders wired directly to their own display unit and the modern ones that use a Can-bus system where the senders and display units are all wired into the same circuit rather like, for example, the depth, speed, wind and autopilot on a Raymarine Seatalk system. The old and new type instruments are not compatible and will not work together on the same circuitry. I know because I have a great set of new Can-bus instruments bought with good intention but which will not work with my MD2020 D individually wired engine sensors.
The trusty MD22 and its analog senders predate CANbus by several decades :)
At least one of the big VP UK agents replied to me with part numbers for senders. Water is cheap but oil very much ott. Maybe I should source from Perkings? Did the Maestro/Montego have oil pressure gauge on the dash? I assume the senders for the gauges need to be wired to alarm senders on the engine? I am also wondering how compatible my panel is as I don't know which engine it was originally mated with.