Boost Gauge Installed!

[DaveColt]

Had a mate over this afternoon and went ahead and installed a gauge.

I think he was there waiting for me to f*k up the drilling into the dash. LOL.

It's all done now, hopefully I wont regret it :O. Could have possible put it a little lower but all in all I'm happy with it. It's very clean as there is just 2 small holes under the bracket that holds the gauge... one feeds the line and the power, the other the mounting bolt... so you can't see any wiring etc.

Makes a bit of a rattle inside when the boost goes up quick - i hear putting some sort of restricter to slow the flow down helps this?

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/1bcba

[Corosith]

So that gauge has the boost line running directly to the gauge (ie. it doesn't use an electronic boost sensor)?

[DaveColt]

yes - just a line straight from the engine bay into the back of the gauge

[Corosith]

I know you don't want to hear it but you are probably best to ditch the analog Calibre gauge and go electronic, the prosport gauges are good value for money and won't break the bank, plus you can set a warning on them and recall the highest boost level reached. Calibre are not the best re accuracy as a few of us have found out. I'm actually currently running a Calibre digital display boost gauge and it is very slow to refresh hence it is about to be ditched, I have bought a new Prosport one to match the red dash colours.

On one of my previous car I had a VDO analog boost gauge and it too had the fluttery needle syndrome and was also quite noisy. At least with the electronic ones you can mount the boost sensor in the engine bay and you only have to run the sensor wire through the firewall vs the vaccum line.
At the end of the day, if you are happy with it, may as well leave it in and maybe upgrade down the track.

[cwar0802]

Don’t worry about the noise I’ve got the exact same unit and install location, although I ran the cables via the side window demister duct. The Calibre unit is mechanical and uses a coil of copper, sort of like a bent glove finger, which uncoils as the pressure inside it builds. The noise you hear are tiny gears which covert the movement of the copper finger into rotational movement. These gears are reasonably loose and as such you get a noise when they move quickly.

The reason I know this is I tried to pull it apart to replace the blue leds with red ones.....I wasn’t successful as the white face and red needle is very hard to remove without damage.

For $50 you can’t want for much more....I agree with Corosith through I’m about to swap it out for a prosport as the colours are important...the blue is blinding at night...