aftermarket gauges newb

electrical. much easier to trouble shoot. Get you a set of Stewart Warner or Autometer stuff. Stewart Warner stuff can be pretty cheap and reliable. NEVER buy Equus stuff. I bought one of their tachs, it was good for cam break-in and that was it, it was dead after about 3 weeks and would only read between 1-2k RPM. If you were at 4k RPM, it said you were still at 2.

Mechanical temp gauge seems like a real pain to install to me and electrical is just as dependable, if not more so, as long as your connections are tight and correctly done.

Mechanical oil gauges mostly come with plastic lines that rub thru and they leak, or they bend and leak, also, that plastic line can't just be cut down to whatever length, you are stuck with 6ft of it to roll up at some point and hide. If you wanna get out of being stuck with the plastic line, you have to buy a pre-made steel braded line or make an AN line. Or you can just go electrical and spend about 20 minutes wiring it up and the only leak you will have to worry about is at the sending unit. which you will also have to worry about with a mechanical gauge.

Just my 2 cents, not trying to say mechanical sucks completely. But it seems like the electrical stuff is just as reliable and pretty easy to trouble shoot.