Well, I decided to installed the gauges with the help of my mechanic. It took us almost 6 hours and I am glad I did not try this myself.

To start with, the link controller IS NOT compatible with the Defi Blue Racer gauges. I was told by the dealer that I purchased the gauges from, that I could still use the controller, but it was not required since the gauges could be installed as stand alone. WRONG, there is no connection port on the gauges for the controller.

As it turned out, the wide-band A/F was the easiest to install. Because the of the Comptech header, we were forced to weld up the 02 sensor bung just past the cat. The heavy gauge steel the header is made from, and the location, made it too risky to attempt welding. It is better to have it installed before the cat. However, we were able to calibrate the gauge to compensate for being after the cat so it all worked out good.

For the oil pressure gauge, it was my intention to splice into the current sensor. However, my mechanic recommended installing a new sensor, since the current sensor only controls an idiot light and may not provide an accurate reading. I found it interesting that the oil pressure drops to almost zero when you let off the gas. The highest it ever got was only 60psi and that was when I has hammering the gas pedal.

The boost gauge was the biggest challenge. Because we want to measure boost going into the intake, we could only find one place to "T" into. This was on the front side of the supercharger, next to the radiator. The space is very small and very hard to get into. There is a hose that goes from the bottom of the superchager (where it goes into the head), to a valve that is mounted on the front of the supercharger. This appears to be the only place to tie into. After about an hour and 4 very scrapped knuckles, we managed to tie into the hose and connect up to the sensor we mounted to a bolt on the supercharger housing.

The next challenge was threading all wires to the inside of the car and through the firewall and dash to the gauges. Because of the "extra" stuff I have in the car (stereo and amplifiers, retro HID w/CCFL, under-dash lighting), there was very little space to work with, both going through the firewall and under the dash.

Last, was installing the pod and connecting the gauges. Again, we had a couple challenges. The chain lease inside the pillar cover (keeps the gauges from flying into my face if the airbag deployed), had to be relocated because of the wires that had to travel behind the cover. Again, another hour.

Finally we were done. The result looks pretty clean, but I really hope they come out with a dash pod soon. It is little annoying having 3 gauges constantly changing in your line of sight (needles bouncing around, LED's changing).

Once everything was completed we noticed something was wrong. The boost gauge MUST be wrong. According to the gauge, the supercharger is producing 9 to 14 pounds if boost. Yeah, that is not right. We searched all around the supercharger but could not find anywhere else to tie the hose into. We also tried calling Comptech several times, but could get anyone to answer the phone. Finally we left a message. Hopefully someone will call us back next week with some suggestions. Maybe Nate can chime in with some suggestions?

In the meantime, I am hoping someone here might be able to offer some suggestions. How about it? Anyone have any suggestions on how to hook-up the boost gauge so it reads correctly? Install is pretty straight forward with regards to hook-ups, it is either where we have the hose tied in, or it's bad senor and/or gauge, which is pretty rare (I am told).

Here are a couple pics of the end result. As you can see, the boost at idle, when cold, is reading 11 pounds. Even when it is warmed up, the boost climbs to 9 to 14 pounds when driving.





Thanks for any help.

 

How hard was it to do a whole new sensor for the oil pressure guage? I was thinking of doing it. Looks good BTW even though I would have gone for Defi's red faced guages.

 

Looks very nice...what about drilling and tapping a new fitting to where you can get an acurate boost reading from?

 

wow the guages actually look nice, but what about the side air bag? dont got the air bags no more or what?

 

does it cover the whole pillar or is just the pods bolted onto the stock pillar?

 

nice job
but how hard was it putting it in
how much help would you suggest to put the gauges in ?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Tokyosmash! &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">How hard was it to do a whole new sensor for the oil pressure guage? I was thinking of doing it. Looks good BTW even though I would have gone for Defi's red faced guages.</TD></TR></TABLE>

If your going to replace your Oil Sensor, I suggest you wait until you are doing an oil change. The sensor is located right above the filter. You can get to it with the filter installed, but it is a challenge. With the filter removed, it is really easy from under the car.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by FERIOkid &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Looks very nice...what about drilling and tapping a new fitting to where you can get an acurate boost reading from?</TD></TR></TABLE>

This is what I am thinking, but I would really like to talk with comptech before drilling holes in the blower.

Thanks

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ajayeyedoublezle &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">wow the guages actually look nice, but what about the side air bag? dont got the air bags no more or what?</TD></TR></TABLE>


Still got driver side airbags. The pillar pod is designed to fit over the existing pillar cover. So if the airbag blows, everything blows off (pillar cover, gauge pod and gauges). To keep the gauges from rocketing into my face, we engineering a leash. It a short lightwieght chain that is attached to the car pillar (down low). The other end is attached to the inside of the pillar cover (towards to top). If the side airbag blows, the cover, pod and gauges will blow up towards the winshield instead of in my face (hopefully).

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by faster Type R &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">does it cover the whole pillar or is just the pods bolted onto the stock pillar?</TD></TR></TABLE>

It covers the entire pillar. Here a few more pictures from the outside so you can see it from all sides.





I picture taking stills suck, as you can see.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by A-Lex-7 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">nice job
but how hard was it putting it in
how much help would you suggest to put the gauges in ?</TD></TR></TABLE>

I was very happy to have my race mechanic with me. Fact is, he did most the work. There are a lot of wires and sensors that need to be installed. I think the Oil pressure gauge would not be too hard, but the widebad A/F gauges needs to have a sensor installed in the exhaust system new the cat (which required welding). The gauge also needs to be calibrated. By mechanic did this on the Dyno. He calibated the gauge/sensor (which has it own controller) with the computer readings on the Dyno. At least I think this was what he was doing. I was reworking the pillar pod at the time.