Ran into a friend of mine at lunch who had previously quit working at the restaurant where we were eating. Asked her why she was back and the following conversation takes place:

Her "I'm having car issues"
Me "What's wrong with it?"
Her "I'm dumping oil.
Me "Uh oh. Have you checked your gaskets"
Her "Yep, sure have"
Me "Uh. I'm betting this is not good"
Her "Well we're going to replace the injectors next"
Me "Ok well that shouldn't be too bad. I'm sure you can get a full set for cheap"
Her "My injectors are $200 a piece"
Me "...what. Wait, what exactly are you driving"
Her "2006 pontiac GTO"
Me "There's no way your injectors are $200 a piece"
Her "It's supercharged'
(At this point I know where this is going)
Me "Hooboy. How much boost are you running on that motor?"
Her "I don't know"
Me "What do you mean you don't know?"
Her "I had them remove the extra gauges when I bought the car"

tl;dr there are giant scorch marks across her manifold and the car is dumping oil. Whee.
My diagnosis: Her pistons rings are toast

Any dissenting opinions?

Sometimes these forums are valuable. She asked me if gauges were necessary and I said I was told recently that AFR and Boost on a supercharged car are mandatory.

clearly gauges are superfluous anyway :rolleyes:

What kind of female drives a 2006 pontiac GTO anyway? I never knew those had a 6L V8 in them.

haha well we all start somewhere, but it's the moment you begin to flaunt it and actually have no clue what you're talking about. I refrain from calling people out too often because it's mean but sometimes it's called for!

faking the funk!

I hear what you are saying but to have gauges removed because you don't like them?? I'm an engineer so I guess I understand some of these things better than most but the point of any type of gauge is to relay information. One would think you would figure out what said gauge's information is depicting and then decide whether or not to pull the gauges based on the importance of the information. If someone felt it was important enough to install the gauges in the first part I would assume that the information was critical enough that you should probably leave them be. But that's just the engineer in me I guess.

Hit ya with the funk, its like, who cut the provolone?!?!

haha hey some older cars don't even come with tachometers haha. The car's ECU reads a bunch of things and if you really wanted you can have a buttload of gauges. Look at the guys who have like 3 running up the A-pillar, 2 by the gauge cluster, and like 9 more in the center console. On a relatively stock or stock car a boost gauge is just an add-on IMO, not necessary. Reminds me of my old MR2, the boost gauge literally just told you if you were in vacuum or in boost, no specific number or anything, sooo what's the point of that?! lol

My point was that it sounds to me like the car is running too much boost which probably led to engine failure. The gauge would be necessary to make that diagnosis prior to y'know..dumping oil all over the road.
It wasn't initially a boosted motor sooo...I'd say that the gauges would be pretty necessary.

Am I wrong here?

Also I wasn't calling her out. Were you calling me out? I don't understand. I was trying to help her troubleshoot because she has family coming over this week to help her work on the car.
I posted this here to ask for opinions, not make fun of her...?

Shoot, I want oil temp, oil pressure and trans temp on a mostly stock car just so I'm aware of what's going on with the vitals!

Those 6.0 LS motors can handle a decent amount of boost before going boom. Makes me wonder how much power it was making.

If she's running $200 (a piece) injectors...

my words added nothing to the subject, yes. No I was not calling you out. I was just saying it seemed silly to me to remove gauges.

What do you suppose this is:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.n...64893732_o.jpg

My guess was some sort of mounting bracket for a tri-tip exhaust but apparently that's not correct.

I don't think superchargers can out of no where run more boost, unlike turbochargers which boost is controlled by the wastegate, there can be issues with boost creep or variations in boost levels depending on the climate