Thursday, August 18, 2016

New Junk For The VW TDI


  While my 2005 VW Golf TDI is my Daily Driver, I occasionally like to give "The Helmet" some love.

  One thing that always bothered me about most modern passenger vehicles and the Golf especially, is the, lack of a proper Oil Pressure Gauge.

 In my opinion, all cars car should come with a Voltage, Oil Pressure and Water Temp Gauge from the factory.  Thankfully most manufacturers almost always include a Water Temp Gauge, although I do remember seeing some base model econoboxes that were only equipped with a Temperature Warning Light (Yikes!).  Not good.  I can understand trying to keep costs down, but some cars NEED these items at a bare minimum.  And another thing, if the car has some form of Forced Induction from the factory, include a Boost Gauge, you heathens!

  The Golf has a very nicely designed dash, with a very attractive set of factory gauges.  However it's missing a Oil Pressure Gauge, Boost Gauge and, while it works just fine, I suspect that the factory Water Temp Gauge is actually nowhere near the 190 degrees F it indicates, pretty much all the time.  So, something needs to be done to address this issue that plagues my OCD tendencies.

  Installing a set of aftermarket gauges is fairly easy, but I didn't really want to spend a bunch of money and time to install some gauges, especially with the limited space afforded by the Double DIN Head Unit installed and the factory airbags installed in the A-Pillar.

  I was going to go with a 3 In 1 Gauge from Glowshift, mounted to a single pod on my steering column.  The gauge in question is 60mm in diameter and  includes a Boost Gauge, Temp Gauge and Pressure Gauge.
Pretty neat, eh?  It even includes a nice Indigo Blue to match the factory back lighting on the VW

gauge cluster.  Priced fairly reasonably for around $140 or some from various vendors.  I wasn't sure about the quality of the product, and incorporating a sender for the water temp would require splicing in a Water Temp Adapter into my Upper Radiator Hose.  Also, I really didn't want to run a bunch of wiring if I didn't have to, so I passed on this idea, for the moment.

I have a Bully Dog Watchdog on"The Doorknob", (my 06 Raider Pickup) and it works great to add additional gauges and other features to the vehicle, rather easily.  Unfortunately it's discontinued and the closest thing that matched from Bully Dog was about $300.  Scratch that too.

Did some Googling and found the Ultra Gauge which offered similar features to the Watchdog, along with some it didn't for under $100.
I placed an order and it arrived today.  I haven't had a chance to install it or play around with it yet, but that should be taken care of fairly soon.  Unfortunately, it doesn't read Oil Pressure on my car, so it looks like I'll still have to install a aftermarket gauge after all.  I already have a AEM Oil Pressure Gauge from a past project that will go on the steering column, while the Ultra Gauge will monitor Boost, Water Temp, Voltage and display Real Time MPG along with other parameters.

  I just hope the stupid thing works as advertised.  If it doesn't, I'll be sure to document it here.

Until Then,
Alpha, Mike, Foxtrot......

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