When Well Enough Can't Be Left Alone; Backdate, EFI/ITB, AC, and more!

[mikesarge]

Dude that gauge came out so good, nice work!!

I personally like the clock, but this has me reconsidering that.. I’d very likely be a buyer if you made these.

[Showdown]

Megasquirt does have a CAN broadcast feature and there are a bunch of open source libraries for decoding the data stream into something usable. The hitch is that those are all for 2 or 4 line LCD text displays so they’ll need to be recoded for a gauge display: that’s not all that hard and is just a matter of time. The difficulty for me at least is getting the damn displays to work- the round display is some esoteric Chinese product that while cheap and of nice quality has no drivers, doesn’t play well with available libraries and has zero customer support.

I have some other displays on order to play with but not being able to get the one that fits perfectly is super frustrating, particularly when it’s jus beyond my coding capacity.

Also- if I were able to get it on an arduino, a digital clock face made to look like the analog would be the default display that was always on as it would draw about the same power as the analog clock.

[rwest]

Julian,

That gauge is awesome, great job! You are a man of many talents.

Sorry I can’t help with the programming- I barely got my shoes tied this morning!

Best,
Rutager

[chrisbalich]

Very sick.

NGL, that gauge has come out even better than expected.
It's gotta be 100x easier to read than my BTI CAN gauge...and much more customizable.

Can you display multiple data streams simultaneously?

[Showdown]

Yes, you can do anything that you can do on TunerStudio on TSDash- you can simply export your TunerStudio project and import it into TSDash and all of your gauges and dashes will be ready to go. I chose round “Porsche” gauge faces but you could have just readouts or multiple dials, etc.

On my AFR gauge I put a text readout of the target AFR at the bottom. And on the TPS gauge there’s an acceleration enrichment readout too.

[Showdown]

Button installed and locked in. As I mentioned earlier, I relocated the intermittent wiper knob to the dash so I had this hole free.

[RDM]

Originally Posted by mikesarge

Dude that gauge came out so good, nice work!!

I personally like the clock, but this has me reconsidering that.. I’d very likely be a buyer if you made these.

Make it with the default screen to look just like the analog clock and there would be no reason not to do it.

[Hulley]

Damn man, that is a killer set-up, really diggin the functionality of that gauge.

[mb911]

Wow what a great thread. Jamie and I have been working together as I doing one of his kits on my 914-6. You are pretty close to me so hopefully I will get it running well and be able to meet up sometime

[Dr J]

Excellent job on the gage. I actually did this with an Arduino and the AEM Infinity by using the canbus. Not only can I read the data through the arduino, but I can actually inject data into the canbus back to the Infinity.

I like your display. It looks better than mine because it is closer to the front. Mine is displaced further back because of the size of the screen. I used a Nextion touch screen which interfaces with the Arduino through a serial port. You may want to check it out. It even has a gage option but the gage needle is too thin and flickers. You can do multiple images and have the arduino change images thus "animating" the gage. However, I have way too many gages to use that method. I settled for displaying numbers with a bar graph meter.

Here is an example of someone (not me) using a nextion to animate a gage with multiple images.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDn7LFyoEm8&ab_channel=InterlinkKnight

I used an encoder connected to the arduino to select different gages. Many possibilities. Have fun!

[Showdown]

Dr J,

I have a nexiton and a DWin screen on order but they’re 4” square so the display would be pushed back a bit- not ideal but maybe workable. I would like to use the round display as it fits so well in the clock opening and is 480x480 so it’s high res and looks great.

The two things that I have to figure out is how to get the round display to work with the arduino and then how to take the can-bus data and make it usable with one of the can libraries.

I’d love to see how you put your system together- particularly how you took the van data and used it.

[Showdown]

A few weeks ago I had a sudden realization: it hasn't snowed since before Christmas, the roads are dry and the temperatures have been relatively moderate.

I've been sneaking out of work a bit early here and there and capitalizing on having one day each weekend to myself to actually drive my car! Strange thought, I know! And guess what, Porsches drive fine in winter!

The only problem is that this has meant that I haven't started on any of the larger projects that I wanted to do this winter. But if holding off on those means more seat time, I'm ok with that. It'll snow eventually!

Today I tackled a few minor things before heading out on a several hour cruise.

I replaced my brass mesh engine grill with... a brass mesh engine grille. The difference this time is that I embossed the mesh to fit the opening and support bars- It looks really nice and is totally flush. I also had a support made by SendCutSend to hold the mesh in place as the previous solution was a bit rickety.







I also decided to paint the R-style tail light housings that I've had forever. I don't really like the tail lights I have now and am not sure I'll run the R-style lights or if I'll make something custom but I may as well try the R-style lights while I have them...

The painting was a breeze and I am feeling super confident about my painting ability now. I've painted a bunch of stuff for work and with all that practice I kinda wish my car was ready for paint... oh well.





I also replaced the gaskets and O-rings in the triangle of death, which with ITBs is more like a triangle of slight annoyance. The shop that initially worked on this engine used all generic parts... and charged me for Porsche parts. Grr. More on this later.



I also decided to see why my driver's side heat wasn't working. After getting under the car I found that the bowden cable wasn't connected to the flapper box anymore. So I pulled the box and tried to make the connection. Unfortunately, the hole in the flapper box for the bolt was too large and the bolt fell right through. The aforementioned shop that did this work used a bunch of washers that prevented the bolt from rotating and thus mangled the cable and eventually worked the bolt loose. More on this later.



So I drilled some holes into the flapper box that were sized appropriately (6mm) and reconnected the bolt and cable and voila; heat.



Finally, I did make it out for a lovely drive, saw a bunch of other classics on the roads and took a bit of 4-wheel prozac. It was nice to have the digital gauge as I was able to closely monitor all of the metrics I wanted/needed. It's cool to see your AFR but even cooler to see the target and that you're spot on!




Now, onto the Airing of Grievances. I bought this car sight unseen with a comical PPI and zero records; a huge gamble. When I received the car I took it to a well known air cooled shop in the area to do a once over and address some issues. I didn't yet have the experience or confidence to tinker with the car so I figured let the pros do it; the car cost less than I had budgeted for so I had some money to pay for the work to be done right. I also had no idea that I'd do all of what I did to the car then. They did a lot of things that were good but as I work on the car more and more I keep finding corners that were cut, parts that should have been OEM but are not, and work that wasn't performed. I severed the relationship with the shop when they tried to charge me $1000 to "fix" my CIS but then admitted they didn't have a fuel pressure gauge and never tested the system and that bad experience is what forced me to roll up sleeves and learn how to fix my CIS which led me down this rabbit hole. So to a degree I owe them a thanks for being so crappy because had they been great, I probably would never have done what I did.

Anyhow, the weather next weekend looks glorious again so I'm plotting a drive, and maybe a few projects too!

[jpnovak]

yay! more driving. Exactly as intended.

I still love that gauge. I like much better than the one I have in my 72.

[jrwilson]

Yeah, after the local shop charged me $3,500 for a CDI box, coil and coil wire I nope'd right out of letting the "experts" work on my car. Turns out they're not that hard to work on.

[mikesarge]

The parallels between your build and mine continue. I spent yesterday screwing with the passenger side heat, between the flapper box and exchanger (the fabric tube was messed up, causing heat to escape and heat things I didn’t want heated, then I broke the cable on reassembly).

If only I had the weather you do- keep enjoying it!

[jpnovak]

Julian, I think we need more details on how you embossed the decklid mesh. Wood buck, cardboard, metal, by hand. What did you use?

I love the underside support structure. Super clean.

[Showdown]

Forming the brass mesh wasn’t terribly difficult but it did take a few tries

Originally I thought that I could use my vacuum table to force the mesh around a buck made of 1/8” Masonite. The vacuum table exerts about 30hgIn but the mesh was a bit too stiff.

So I turned to hand forming with a piece of oak, hammer and the aforementioned buck. It took all of 20 mins- just about as long as setting up the vacuum table.

If I had a hydraulic press it might have been easier but I don’t have a press… yet.

The buck:



The oak block and close-up. You can see the imprint of the mesh into the plywood.



After forming it, I cut off the excess to make it fit the opening. It needed a bit of fine tuning but the mesh is pretty thin so no tools other than hands were needed.

[jpnovak]

Most excellent. That really came out great.

[Showdown]

[mention]jpnovak [/mention] I can list everything I did for the gauge- parts, code, etc… it’s not all that hard and given that you know your way around electronics, it’ll be a breeze for you. Honestly, the most laborious part is configuring TSDash but I think I can export all the gauges thus making it super simple.

I mean, you’ve got the free time for another project, right

[1980 SC Targa]

Very nice results on the mesh. I'm interested in seeing more of your table saw/workbench/outfeed setup. Never thought of having my bench alongside the table saw like that. Any trouble getting it coplanar with the table saw top?