Best bang for the buck gauges?
 

So far I've looked at Autometer (well reviewed but basic for the price), Prosport (bad reviews) and GlowShift (look good for the price). Any others I've missed? I want boost/vac (-20-30psi), water and oil temps (*C), and oil pressure (psi) all in 52mm. They don't need to be spot on (car's aren't rocket science) but they need to be decently accurate and reliable.

What is your budget per gauge?

I see lots of people using the Glow-Shift stuff and it seems to work well.
I was considering this for my own builds but in no rush to get any gauges for the car as of right now.

All I can say about Glowshift is that I have a volt, boost/vaccum, & oil Pres. gauges. the volt and boost/vaccum have worked flawlessly for 2-3 years now but the oil pressure gauge is the second one I've gone through because the oil sender unit keeps failing... and this second one has ALSO failed.

So the simple function gauges work but the more complicated ones tend to fail as soon as warranty runs out.

I'm probably going to integrate most of my gauges into 2, 4-4.5" units from Speedhut.

Fully customizable (incl. gauge combination), GPS speedo and great customer service.

http://www.norotors.com/index.php?topic=20393.0
. Auto From Speedhut.

It is expensive to buy gauges like Defi or Stack. But if you can find a quality used set they seem to hold their value quite well if you want to consider it safe 'ish' buy.

I bought stack gauges. They were not cheap but i plan on keeping them if i ever move platforms.

i got glowshifts at first and they both werent great, the oil pressure worked for a while then the needle started giving inaccurate readings and hopping, also had a/f gauge didnt even work, just bounced up and down

switched to prosport, no problems at all

I should also note that the oil senders are going to be in a very high heat area and they'll likely get wet, so I'm not sure if I should go for something that comes with more expensive senders in the hopes that they'll last longer or go for cheaper ones and just chock up replacing them every few years as a part of maintenance.

I'm hoping to keep it under $300 for the four but I know that might be hard, the boost gauge can be mechanical to help keep cost down.

That's actually not a bad idea, if I can customize them to match my stock speedo and tach I might go for that. Water temp, fuel, oil psi and voltage (too bad it's not oil temp, voltage is worthless) in the dash would let me run AFR, oil temp and boost on the pillar so I won't need to have one on my steering column.

I don't really care about resale as I'll be owning the car far longer than I expect the sensors to last, and I don't think I'd go used unless they were cheap enough to replace the sensors, I know 90% of people absolutely suck at car electrical.

Oh and another side note, a warn function would be a huge plus so I don't have to spend half my time checking gauges.

Aren't all boost gauges mechanical? It's just tapping into a vac line.

Are you looking for full sweep or just quarter? Mechanical or digital? Things like water temp and oil pressure I'd stick with digital gauges as I'd prefer not to have hot fluids running into the cabin, but thats just me.

For something super basic, places like Princess Auto have cheap gauges. They aren't the best but they do the job. For brand name, Autometer's cheaper series do well for the price. I run the Cobalt series but their original Sportcomp set is usually decently priced.

Alternatively you can run a Bluetooth obd2 plug and use the Torque app on your phone or a small tablet. I believe you can program it to set up warnings when various parameters are hit.

They aren't round but I use auber gauges (lots of programming options and cheap), McNally also makes some 2 in 1 round gauges to save space. Something like the edge insight is nice if your vehicle supports it.

Link to the McNally ones?

There are full mechanical, electrical with analog faces and electrical with digital faces for most of the common gauges, I want electric with analog. I don't like digital because reading numbers takes more time and attention than glancing at a needle to see if it's in roughly the right spot. Quarter sweep is probably enough for what I want, full sweep is good for cosmetics only IMO.

And I don't have OBDII :(

I really like the Defi line-up. BF for full sweep, warnings and playback but they can get pricey quickly. I wish they still made the D-Gauge but they replaced those with the Racer series and I'm not really into the look of them. The Speedhut stuff that ICEBOY posted looks REALLY dope. I'd probably go that route depending on costs. Other brands to consider are Pivot, Omori or Innovate. Innovate offers some 2 in 1 options for pressure and temp.