Saturday, February 15, 2014

Podi boost gauge install

I finally got around to installing the boost gauge that my wife got for me back in 2011... yes, before I even had the car :) Dealing with electrical and interior stuff always scares me off so I wasn't too eager to do the install.

The Podi gauge is an electronic stepper gauge with a separate sender unit. The one I have uses a white face with a red needle and is a very good color match for the cluster. It can be cycled between either a white or red face with either a red or orange needle. It also has playback and warning features. Pretty nice!

I used the 034 boost tap on the post-throttle body MAP/temp sensor as seen here from a picture by Marty.


And then I ran the vacuum line around to the back of the airbox and mounted the sender to the airbox itself.


This area gets pretty toasty so I wrapped the filter and sender with some reflective heat wrap. I swear I've added like 5lbs of this stuff to the car now :)


I ran the wire from the sender thru the firewall at the series of grommets next to the brake booster. This pic is of the firewall, brake booster just on the left. The top cable was already present, the boost sender is on the left.


And this pops out just over the brake pedal. To orient you that's the brake pedal lever on the right and the purple bit in the upper left is the OBD port.


This tool is freaking awesome for getting wires thru the grommet without getting snagged or caught up on anything. It's a Thexton wire insertion tool, available on Amazon.


So that covers getting the mechanical bits setup and the sender wire into the car. I chose to install the gauge in the center vent. Using a nylon trim tool you can pry the gauge out from the dash. It's got some serrated edge things on it to keep it in place but just get it out a bit and you'll be able to get your fingers behind it and pull it the rest of the way out. You'll also want to get the vent to the left out as well to get some additional space with pulling wires through.

I used a 10gauge wire inserted thru the vent and was able to poke it down thru a gap between the dash and center console. Once that was fished thru we were able to pull the wire all the way across to the fusebox on the back side of the lower dash without needing to drop the lower dash.

My fabricator was able to pull some plastic conduit thru which did make things a bit tougher, if you're just pulling wire it'll be much easier. Here you can see the conduit running down under some large sensor/controller and then across the lower dash under the steering wheel.




For the Podi gauge the sender has three wires, switched power, ground and data. The gauge itself has 4 wires that are used; switched power, constant power, ground and data. We chose to run the sender wire up to the back of the gauge where those connections were made and then run wires back to the fuse box, that way all of the splices were at the back of the gauge.
Here's a pic I found from another writeup that shows this splicing required. Again, this shows the ground from the gauge joined with the sender, switched power from the gauge with the sender, the yellow wire is constant power from the fuse box and then the orange and white are the data connection.


At the fuse box end I used the add-a-circuit adapters for both connections. This is from before we started and shows where my radar detector is wired into a blank location that provides switched power. The blanks next to the 20amp fuse on the same row provide constant power.


To mount the gauge into the vent pod I used an Osir O-pod adapter. This is a really nice part and snaps directly into the vent trim ring for a secure fit. The Podi gauge did sit a bit tall in the adapter so my fabricator took about 1/8" off of the rim of the adapter so that the gauge sits flush.

Getting the vent pod apart takes a bit and is easier to do with a second set of hands. I didn't get any pictures of this but there's a writeup on Fourtitude with some good pics.

That's about all there is to it. Once the wiring is all done hook up the sender and gauge and make sure it all works before buttoning it all up.