Whats involved in relocating the joystick? I assue you have to remove it from the PCB and then solder some long wires from the joystick to somewhere on the PCB?

Due to work and a long journey over the weekend I will provide some answers today but a full how to is a few days away .

First a warning from jim (freegeek) who manufactures the board

;Customers should note that modifying the liquid gauge pcb in any way will invalidate your warranty. Refunds will not be given and repairs may not be possible."

I did this mod knowing the above applied and if it failed or i did damage to the board it was my own problem.

Doing this involved removing two components from the board, ,jim supplied a board without a 9 way connector ,and resoldeing them to the board in a different way.

The board (square version) is designed to be separated into two parts main and joystick and then connected together with a 6 core cable,I have mounted the joystick by the headlamp level adjuster ,this does involve cutting a small part of the panel (not visible after assembly ) and reshaping the joystick board.

On a 2002 octavia VRS there are only 6 warning lights in the centre section and the gauge fits below them just!

To fit it in you need to modify the plastic film with all the gauges printed on it(square hole) and in my case the black rear cover and a small piece out of the front cover for cable access.

The major part of the work is modifying the white plastic frame that clips onto the main pcb in the dash as this provides suport for the LIquid gauge when the job is done. I did not do this on my actual car instruments as I had a couple of spare vrs instrument pods to test things out on ,this meant my car was out of action for 2.5 hrs whilst i dismantled the pod and rebuilt it with the original pcb and front and modified back, so no need to reprogramme the dash pcb as it is unmodified.

To do this requires soldering on fine boards and a lot of cutting of the liquid pcb to achieve and I had a lot of help from jim and a couple of wiring technicians and their workshop and many thanks to jim for his patience .

As I said this does require a lot of work on the liquid gauge and dissasembling a £700 instrument pack (not including the reprogramming )and you do it at your own risk.

.If you want to do this I will provide the information next week if someone can help me with hosting the photographs

.p.s. to the people who suggested its a sticker , I can provide the video if someone can host it .

when i typed this it was formatted but when posted it had removed paragraphs and line returns (or is it just me )

Edited 21 March, 200917 yr by kynastonp
formatting

I'm a bit confused....what's that above about £700 ? I thought I saw this liquid guage on the race diagnostics website for £180 ? Are you referring to the dissasembly of the OEM Skoda instrument cluster at that price?

Can someone give me a list of what these guages can do/measure? How do they measure boost without being plummed into the usual vac line etc? Can they measure oil/water temp too and how?

Yes I'm a noob

Suddenly feel good that my car came without maxidot....

Which Octavia Mk1's came with Maxidot and how can you tell? I'm not fully clued up on what the difference between a maxidot and non maxidot display is. Sorry for the noob questions. Cheers

I'm a bit confused....what's that above about £700 ? I thought I saw this liquid guage on the race diagnostics website for £180 ? Are you referring to the dissasembly of the OEM Skoda instrument cluster at that price?

Can someone give me a list of what these guages can do/measure? How do they measure boost without being plummed into the usual vac line etc? Can they measure oil/water temp too and how?

Yes I'm a noob

£700 refers to the skoda instruments which you have to dissasemble to put the liquid gauge into see picture attached a few posts above for more details of the gauge try Race Diagnostics Ltd - Home

I'm a bit confused....what's that above about £700 ? I thought I saw this liquid guage on the race diagnostics website for £180 ? Are you referring to the dissasembly of the OEM Skoda instrument cluster at that price?

Can someone give me a list of what these guages can do/measure? How do they measure boost without being plummed into the usual vac line etc? Can they measure oil/water temp too and how?

Yes I'm a noob

All the data except the g-force comes from either the engine management or dashboard ECU via the diagnostics port. Much of this data is not available using conventional OBD2 diagnostics testers as it is only available when using the proprietary VAG protocol. This protocol is used by vag-com.

There are two ways to calculate BHP fromthe data available, either deriving it from the maf or the torque estimate from the engine ecu.

I use BHP=MAF/.8 as it seems to be more reliable than the torques estimate from the engine ecu.

The torque is the derived from the BHP, so torque = bhp * 5252 / rpm

I put a bit of smothing on to the maf in these calculation to eliminate the spike inrush of air during the inlet perurising phase when the turbo first spins up as this was giving a torque overestimate on the earlier versions.

Can someone give me a list of what these guages can do/measure?

Most of it is listed on here in the pdf user manual:

Race Diagnostics Ltd - Home

The Skoda Octavia one can't do Exhaust Gas Temperature as I don't think there is a sensor present (on a standard car anyway) to send that data to the ECU.

FreeGeek - thanks for confirming how the BHP is calculated, we were wondering how it was done as it seems more accurate (compared with rolling road figures) than the BHP that VAG-Com is able to calculate.

CoursemyHorse - I think the only Octavias that came with maxidot were ones with sat-nav as the maxidot is used to display the turn signals in front of the driver. Might be wrong there though :confused:

All the data except the g-force comes from either the engine management or dashboard ECU via the diagnostics port. Much of this data is not available using conventional OBD2 diagnostics testers as it is only available when using the proprietary VAG protocol. This protocol is used by vag-com.

There are two ways to calculate BHP fromthe data available, either deriving it from the maf or the torque estimate from the engine ecu.

I use BHP=MAF/.8 as it seems to be more reliable than the torques estimate from the engine ecu.

The torque is the derived from the BHP, so torque = bhp * 5252 / rpm

I put a bit of smothing on to the maf in these calculation to eliminate the spike inrush of air during the inlet perurising phase when the turbo first spins up as this was giving a torque overestimate on the earlier versions.

So am i correct in thinking if you make a power run with the liquid gauge it will produce the same results as the block 120 Bhp run in vag-com except this makes the conversions on the run?

The Maf results have to be taken with a pinch of salt. My MAF logging for example will continue to rise all the way up to 6560rpm which is definitly not where peak Bhp is obtained.

Threads merged

So am i correct in thinking if you make a power run with the liquid gauge it will produce the same results as the block 120 Bhp run in vag-com except this makes the conversions on the run?

The Maf results have to be taken with a pinch of salt. My MAF logging for example will continue to rise all the way up to 6560rpm which is definitly not where peak Bhp is obtained.

Here is a typical log which peaks at about 6k on my car and give an accurate indication of bhp, I have found that the block 120 method is more innacurate vs what I have measured on rolling roads.

Here are a couple of logs from my car showing both calculation methods, at some point in the future I may allow the user o select the method they feel is best for their car.

Would anywhere in Hampshire/Surrey/Berkshire offer a service of fitting this guage in the maxidot display area as someone did above and for how much?

After 300 miles in one day, testing the installation with the remote joystick and gauge in the instrument pack (see picture above) I can safely say it works very well with none of the false switching that jim was worried about due to the cable length ,jim has however modified the software to cope with longer cables .The position is perfect and the gauge is visible day and night,even in strong sunshine . Even better is that when switched off it is completely invisible which was part of my reason for doing it this way even though it is a much more difficult install .Driving with the display on can be a little mesmerising as it is in line of sight everytime you look at the instruments however.

what jim has produced is brilliant!

Do we know if there is a group buy for these yet? Definalty interested in purchasing one! The one on the website that slots in the vents slats looks cracking!

Probably more potential for a group buy when they've finished developing a version for the 1.9 Tdi engine, as then the Fabia vRS and Octy Tdi owners can join in on it. They need at least 10 people to order one to get the 10% discount.