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For 16 years now, people complained about the dashboad coolant and oil gauges being useless. So I though I'd go ahead and mod them.
For the coolant gauge I've grabbed data off the CAN bus, for the oil gauge an oil sandwich plate and pressure sensor is needed since the OEM pressure switch is garbage anyway.
Hook the motors behind the gauges to a custom-made PCB, and the end result is that you can turn the gauges to point to whatever you want in terms of measured value vs needle position.
For example the coolant gauge can start moving off center past 200F and max out at 220F, or whatever numbers float your boat.
The oil gauge will be trully proportional, for example center around 50-60psi and max out at 80psi, or 100 psi, or whatever you feel works best for you.
The kit will be released for sale by the end of july, so far I've got 20 preorders to fulfill.
The kit will look like this and will be placed inside the OEM cluster housing.
Also includes a cooling fans control option - if you can be bothered to run 2 wires from the cluster to the relay box in the engine bay. Turns the fans on much sooner - 195F half speed and 200F full speed.
Will come in 2 versions: basic and deluxe. The basic one will do the coolant gauge mod + cooling fans, the deluxe one will also do the oil gauge mod as well as what the basic can do.
Full hardware and install instructions will be provided. At the moment, the kit has finished the design phase, manufacturing is underway and testing/validation of all features is to be completed by the end of the month - if all goes well.
Ideeas? How much would you pay for something like this? Anything else ?
Don't have a clue about pricing.
I can get a scangauge for around 180$ where I am, for reference. Your kit also provides oil pressure and fan control.
I would be interested in theory but I am outside of US.
Let's see what others have to say about pricing.
Interesting product though, hope everything goes well for you!
Nice! I would be interested for a ~$100 range for the base kit without fan control.
Have you thought about repurposing the oil gauge to something else entirely? Since you're feeding it all of its own signal, you could turn it into a boost gauge for those with boost.
It would have to have a digital output for me to purchase, like the digital speedometer. IMO anyone who's ripping apart their dash to install gages probably don't want to settle for "looks like it's in a good range".
Edit: If you came up with a way to have digital displays of coolant temp, oil temp, and oil pressure inside the stock gage cluster, maybe by removing the analog ones, I think it'd be a much more practical kit. I'd pay $300-$400 easily for that, maybe more. The next best thing out on the market is the racing beat ashtray pod set up, and that's going to run you $720.
Last edited by 0-TO-100_Real_Quick; Jun 28, 2021 at 08:49 AM.
^^ The GoodBox outputs all that to the the center display (radio/climate control). They stubbornly refuse to produce any more and the original run is kind of unobtanium now, so an alternative would be sweet.
So about a digital display - that is possible to achieve but it wil require a lot of install work.
As is, to get control of the analog-like gauges you only need to take out the white, back cover of the cluster and solder some wires.
To fit a digital display inside the cluster would require total teardown of the cluster down to removing the OEM circuit board out. Then you need to cut into the plastics and black sheet of vinyl/whatever it is to make a cut for the screen.
That would be a pain to most - but for the few of you who would buy something like this - I can offer it.
Now about repurposing the oil gauge - sure. You can put just about anything there - oil temp, boost, afr, fuel economy even. Some may require some extra hardware such as a resistor or thermistor, but nothing impossible to fix.
On a side note, the cooling fans option is not mandatory - and costs $2-$5 to add. Don't want it ? Don't use it - forget it exists and that is all you need to do.
Got one unit assembled and into testing + final software development. Works nicely if I may pat myself on the back.
The defaults of the kit are:
coolant gauge centers at 180F and remains almost centered untill 212F
starts moving off center from 212F and hits the red tick at 230F
hits the H letter at 239F
goes past the H letter at 240F
oil gauge starts from 0 psi and centers at 43psi
hits the H letter at 87 psi
goes past the H letter past 90 psi
cooling fans (can) start on low speed at 185F and full speed at 194F
The price however won't be under $200. I'm thinking the following price levels:
Basic kit - does the coolant gauge mod + fan control(optional) = $280 shipped
Deluxe kit - does the coolant gauge mod + fan control(optional) + oil pressure gauge mod + oil sandwich plate + oil pressure sensor = $349 shipped
Custom range for either gauge (change the default range of readings vs needle position or change the fan turn-on temperature) - $10/item.
I'm interested in the coolant only kit, does it come with the required wiring to do the fan mod? Any chance we could get a peek at the instructions so we know what we're getting into for installation?
For the fan mod, the wiring is not supplied by default - but its just 2 lenghts of wire from the cluster to the fuse box. Install instructions can be provided prior to the sale.
Speaking of sales, I have started selling them! Check out my sales page at https://www.facebook.com/RotaryTesters/
bear with me, but can't similar be accomplished by just adjusting the start points / end points / curves via ECU tuning? I recall creating a much more accurate / responsive needle for the coolant gauge tweaking values via mazdaedit. Fan settings can be modified accordingly too.
For the coolant gauge I suppose you can edit the sensor scaling to achieve something like this, but then ECT could also be used by the ecu in its fueling maps - that I do not know despite having mazdaedit myself. I know it is used when the engine is cold, but what happens when your coolant sensor reads 235F when your engine is doing 190F? Could be a decent experiment that may take some few reflashes of the ecu to get right.
For the oil pressure gauge - no luck - not a chance. The logic is hardwired based on the OEM pressure switch. Oil pressure does not appear at all in mazdaedit.
Got it, I never played with the oil pressure idiot gauge but did all kinds of stuff with the coolant one via mazdaedit. I ran a dedicated gauge for oil pressure via a sandwich plate.
If the OEM water sensor is off 45F I think we've got bigger problems. There may be a PID table for it but yeah... you'd need that baseline / reference point to tune it.
Let me see if I can find my old posts about playing with the water sensor. they may be in the mazdaedit thread.
Kit is still being made, and the range of values the needle shows can be altered prior to shipping out.
Defaults for coolant gauge are:
<210F similar to OEM
212F the needle starts moving off center
230F the needle is maxed out towards H letter
Defaults for oil gauge are:
0 psi = L letter
40 psi = needle is centered on the middle tick
80 psi = maxed out towards H letter
Fully proportionall in between these steps.
$350 shipped, includes the board itself, oil filter adapter plate, oil pressure sensor, wiring, instructions. S1 fully supported, S2 in coolant gauge only - and $250 only.
Shipped by post, paid via Paypal.
Being that the S2 doesn't qualify for the oil pressure side, I'm guessing this set up can't be easily modified for the higher pressure? Would a higher rated pressure sensor or a resistor be a useable modification?
The sensor I use is good for upto 150 psi by default. If more than that is used/needed/wanted then I could beef it up to 300 psi which should satisfy everyone. Just let me know and I'll grab an uprated sensor to suit your needs. Anyway, I've never head of a renesis oil pump making more than 100psi of oil pressure.
The thing with S2's is not that they run a higher oil pressure by default, it is just that they lack the needle in the dashboard S1s have.
Last edited by ciprianrx8; Nov 14, 2021 at 02:24 PM.
Sharing my experience with the Ciprian kit. Awesome for a daily driver Rx8 that wouldn’t be fine if riced out with gauges all around. Now my oil and water meter are there with a purpose. And in the end of the line, Ciprian it’s a awesome guy and helped out on installation and everything. Totally recommended.
Still available, but probably once the last 5 I have on stock go, there will not be another batch as I've run out of parts(semiconductor shortage and such).
