Argh!

So I’m doing the 4 hour drive home last night after a day of business meetings on the road. My friends who have spent time in Germany always lament at the sorry excuse for drivers ed and driving standards we have in this country, and I emphatically agree. Last night, I witnessed MANY examples of asinine behavior…

My least favorites:

One: The jerks in large trucks (big rigs or panel trucks) who feel the need, in a 65mph zone in a congested section of I-85, to pass another truck at a speed of 67mph, because the other guy was only going 66mph, thereby occupying the passing lane for 2 minutes to make a single pass… while the prevailing speed in the fast lane in that area is 80mph+…

Two: The complete idiot in the Chevy Cavalier who was employing the exact same passing strategy, except they were passing an “undocumented Mexican immigrant” in tiny pickup truck, in a 55 zone, in an entirely wide open and deserted area of divided 4-lane. I patiently waited behind them until they were several car lengths in front of the pickup. Still cruising maybe 2mph over the posted limit, in the “fast lane”… I quickly and politely flashed my lights once in a courteous request to pull over. Instead they shot me the bird, and SLOWED DOWN to come back beside the pickup, where they maintained their position…

I flashed again. They shot the bird again. At this point I turn on several hundred watts of high beams, xenons, and rally lights, and leave them on, illuminating the interior of the POS Cavalier like a magnesium flare… they turn on the bird, and leave it on, and maintain pace… then they slow further (to about 40mph), allowing the pickup to overtake them on the right… I drop back a bit, they anticipate my move, and they move into the right lane to block… doofus… I instantaneously kick in 15psi of boost and overtake on the left, then move back into the right lane like a courteous motorist when it is safe to do so.

Mind you, I have NO interest in “racing” a teenager in a POS bone-stock Cavalier on ANY day - there’s no sport in it, and I don’t want even idiots like this to kill themselves when I’m nearby… and I have even less interest in it at the end of a 12 hour workday in my last hour of drive home. I just want to motor. But this nimrod moves back into the left lane behind me and takes up the chase. I resume my V1-aided cruising speed and watch the Cavalier in the side mirror. Eventually, fear of losing their license if they were to happen upon a state trooper overtakes their testosterone level, and they slow back down to something approaching their original speed, as me and my blazing rally lights disappear up the road.

WHY do kids feel compelled to behave this way? I was just driving, minding my own business, and they decided that the left lane was somehow their God-given property and I was unreasonable to want to make use of it for a moment or two… Argh… Back 20 years ago, a buddy and I fantasized about the ultimate automotive accessory, the “Asshole Missile”, that, once launched, would seek and destroy such wastes of oxygen. I went so far as to figure out how to make PVC launch tubes for Estes rockets to fit on my roofrack… I’m about ready to revive that design effort…

One of my friends - another car fanatic and gizmo junky - pointed me toward the Escort Passport G-Timer. It’s an accelerometer that can measure cornering G’s, 0-60 and quarter mile times, braking, even HORSEPOWER with nothing but a power connection (gee whiz!). They make two models: the “basic” GT1 model, and the GT2 with quite a few additional features. Seems like a really cool “toy” - but $180 isn’t exactly “toy” pricing. There are much more sophisticated units available in that price range. Then I found a GREAT deal on Amazon - $54! I couldn’t pull out my credit card fast enough…

This thing is a BLAST. Setup is pretty easy - you suction cup mount it to the center of your windshield, and plug it in. If you want accurate horsepower readings, you need to do a bit more setup and enter vehicle weight, coefficient of drag x frontal area, drivetrain loss factor, etc. And you can tweak some factors for suspension stiffness to fine-tune acceleration sensing. It has easy-to-use control buttons on the unit, and also has a “remote” button on the lighter plug that’s easier to reach for changing display modes and starting timing runs.

It has a ton of different display modes to watch G-force readings as you drive. You press the “Start” button to put it in “run timing” mode - it calibrates for a few seconds, then tells you it’s ready for the run. The timer starts automatically when you start your run, and measures until either you stop accelerating, you travel 1/4 mile, or you go 30 seconds. It stores up to 10 runs and remembers your best run data. After the run you can see many statistics about the run: 0-60, 1/4 mile time and speed, maximum horsepower, and other times. The horsepower reading (adjusted to BHP) seems pretty accurate based on my mods (I haven’t done a dyno test yet…). It has some limited data logging capabilities, and you can buy an optional data cable and computer software for downloading run data to your computer.

It’s like a drag-strip-in-a-box… very cool…

These have been out for a few years, and there are other similar units now that have more features (the G-Tech Pro is excellent, and offers “dyno-style” graphing and torque calculation), but the G-Timer GT2 is a “no-brainer” for about $50…

I wanted to know real water temp, and intake air temp, and boost - after looking at a number of options, I decided that the most cost effective way to get this - and more - was to buy a ScanGaugeII. The ScanGaugeII is a cool little computer with a digital display that plugs into your ODB-II port under the dash. It combines ODB-II scan tool, trip computer, and digital gauge capabilities in a single unit that’s insanely easy to install, portable to move between vehicles, and costs only $159 (from the company, on eBay - note that if you contact Way Motor Works, Way often will sell these for a bit less if you ask for the NAM discount). I had been planning to buy a simple ODB-II code reader for quite some time, and the ScanGaugeII does that and much, much more for not much more money.

The ScanGaugeII comes with a 6ft cable, a couple of velcro stips, and a manual. That’s it. And that’s all you need. Neat installation takes less than 5 minutes. I copied Josh Wardell and others, and velcro’d the unit on the left end of the dash, just forward of the little “step down” - it looks really clean, is easy to see, is mostly obscured from the outside by my vehicle inspection sticker, and doesn’t impede my vision out of the car. The cable runs along the edge of the dash, then in behind the removable dash endcap and out under the dash, where it plugs into the OBD-II port. Very simple, and very clean.

Setup is very easy and menu driven. First you turn on the car - the ScanGaugeII automatically powers on and off. You set your engine displacement and fuel tank size to calibrate the trip computer functions. Then you can enter “gauge” mode, and select any four digital gauges to display at once. You select the gauges by pressing the button next to each of the the “slots” to cycle through the available gauges for that slot. The unit remembers the settings until you change them. Options include:

• Fuel Economy (MPG)
• Voltage
• Coolant Temperature
• Intake Air Temperature
• Engine Speed (RPM)
• Vehicle speed (MPH)
• Manifold Pressure
• Engine Load
• Throttle Position
• Ignition Timing
• Open/Closed Loop

The ScanGaugeII also has an “Add-A-Gauge” feature that enables you to program the unit to read and display any other car-specific data available via the ODB-II interface. Their website has instructions for setting up gauges for calculated horsepower, fuel trim, and O2 sensor readings. I found on an Internet forum instructions for setting up a gauge to calculate and display boost (instead of Absolute Manifold Pressure, which is a standard gauge). The HP and boost gauges work great!

The unit is very easy to read in the daylight - even with the top down! At night, the unit is backlit in one of many user configurable colors. I like orange, to match my other instruments.

The trip computer is very full featured, and offers:

• Maximum Speed
• Average Speed
• Maximum Coolant Temperature
• Maximum RPM
• Driving Time
• Driving Distance
• Fuel Used
• Trip Fuel Economy
• Distance to Empty
• Time to Empty
• Fuel to Empty

Each of these is calculated and tracked for the current trip, current day, previous day, and current tank. You tell the unit when you fill-up, and how much you paid per gallon, and it does all the rest. It resets the current trip any time the unit is off for more than three minutes. I didn’t think I’d use the trip computer since the MINI has several of these functions built in, but was surprised by how useful and easy the trip computer has been!

I haven’t needed to scan any codes yet, but this capability is pretty simple and I expect it to work fine.

I’m typically displaying the Boost, Horsepower, Water Temp and Intake Temp gauges, and it’s fascinating - I have to make myself ignore them while driving…

I’ve written previously about my OutMotoring gauge faces. I really like the way they look vs. the OEM gauge faces. But there’s one little quirk with them that’s been driving me nuts. Normal people wouldn’t care. But normal people don’t have blogs devoted to a clown car.

There’s a section of the tachometer, between about 5300 and 6700 RPM, where the little hash marks don’t light up completely. Like this:

I had assumed until yesterday that this was a printing defect in the gauge face. Since Aaron at OutMotoring let me be the guinea pig for these faces and they were free, I wasn’t going to complain about it.

Well, then I see a thread on NAM about this very issue. Turns out it’s not an issue with the faces per se - it’s an issue with the gauge itself. Turns out that the area under the gauge face where it’s dark is actually “walled off” and there are some extra red LEDs under that that never come on. They’re designed to illuminate on the European diesel MINI to show its lower redline. And they use the same gauges on the diesel. Looks like perhaps Aaron didn’t take this into account when he designed his tach faces. Heck, I wouldn’t have, either - never even heard or thought about this until now. The OEM faces actually DO have little hash marks in that part of the face - but they only light up on the diesel, and then they light up red…

Below, you can see the “walled off” part of the gauge for the redline LEDs, with the face removed.

The section on the far lower right end is where the three LEDs for the redline are housed - the wall keeps the red light from bleeding out into the other areas of the tach. Above that are three small “boxes”. The first and third house additional small red LEDs for the diesel redline. The middle one houses a small red LED for the diesel redline, and a larger orange LED for lighting up the 6000 RPM large hash mark.

Well, since I never plan to convert my car to a diesel, there’s no need to keep those extra partitions in there. So let’s get rid of ‘em. Whadaya say?

While you certainly need to make sure you don’t accidentally damage the LEDs, otherwise this isn’t particularly precision work. No one will ever see the inside of this gauge (not even a mechanic - because the whole gauge assembly is replaced if it breaks). I thought about using a Dremel tool to cut or grind the extra plastic out - but didn’t want to create lots of plastic dust in there. So instead I used a much less glamorous approach. I nibbled it out with my small diagonal cutters and small nippers.

Here’s the carnage:

And here are the remnants:

I could have spent a long time getting this beautiful and perfect. But it wouldn’t have mattered. In fact, I only spent about 3 minutes nibbling the pieces out. If I had done this when I did the original installation of the faces, that 3 minutes is the only extra time it would have taken. Instead, it took me about half an hour including all the disassembly, reassembly and picture taking time.

The results? Take a look…

Before:

After:

The colors don’t show up well in the photos - but the redline area is pure red like it should be, and the rest is orange - like it should be. The area from 6100-6700 RPM is a *little* dimmer than the rest, but it’s MUCH better than it was before. Close enough that you wouldn’t notice anything if you didn’t know what was behind there…

Thanks to heyitzsuchiboi for the idea!

Update:

After seeing it in the dark and looking at the photos some more, I decided I could do a LITTLE better - and it was worth trying. So I cracked it back open and got a bit more aggressive in my trimming. The objective was to open up the area around the orange LED under the “6″ hash mark better - to allow it to flood the previously dark area with more light.

I’m glad I did - because I learned some more and it’s now *perfect*. Turns out that the LED that I THOUGHT was the one for the “6″ hash mark wasn’t - the center small LED is actually another red one that doesn’t illuminate. There’s a larger (same size as the others) orange LED that’s actually hidden under the plastic under the edge of that center compartment. I CAREFULLY trimmed away more of the bezel and now it looks like this:

Sorry for the blurry pic - best I could do in the low light. But you can see how much more “open” this is. Note the trimmed area has three small “blocks” on the circuit board - those are the diesel redline LEDs. Note that just to the left and below the center of the small LEDs is another larger white “block” partially obscured by the white bezel - THIS is the orange LED that lights up the large hash mark for 6000 RPM. Now with it exposed, it floods that whole area with more bright orange light - and the result is perfect.

Cutting this much out is a little scarier - because you’re getting much closer to the circuit board and the LEDs. It appears that you can remove the white plastic bezel completely - I started to try, but then decided to trim it in place. Still, I suggest you remove the bezel if you’re going to cut this deep, because that orange LED is RIGHT under where you’ll be cutting… I got scared when I exposed it, hoping I hadn’t damaged it - I hadn’t.