I wanted to retrofit a coolant temp gauge. I wanted it to look OEM, but open to whats available. What option are out there?

 

Is your cooper a Justa or S? I've just installed a Scangauge 3 (with a Craven Speed mount made especially for the SC3) on my 2012 Cooper S. Lot's of PIDs available on both the justa and the S. For some strange reason, you can only see oil pressure on the Cooper S even though both the N16 and N18 engines have an oil pressure transmitter.

 

The Craven Speed gauge kit is the way to go.

 

I have a 2013 Base model. Not intersted in oil pressure, just the coolant temp. Cravenspeed seems to only offer dual gauges. However I do see they have a single gauge for the R53. I will reach out. Thanks for the input.

What else is available?

 

I fit an AEM temp in mine

 

Got photos of your install?

 

I have boost and AFR in the vents. So you could put it in there as well

 

Are those wired or Bluetooth?

 

All wired.

Here are my vent ones

 

So after looking at whats available, I didnt want to spend $600 on a temp gauge. Additionally, I didnt want to hack into my coolant hose knowing there is a signal from the OBD. So I opted for an OBD connected gauge.




It has other stuff like a tach, volt meter, oil pressure and air/fuel ratio. But I just want the coolant temperature. One neat feature it alerts you on your engine revs when its not at operating temp. Wish it has color illumination options.

 

Nice! What's the source for that?

 

Straight from OBD socket. Comes with a long enough harness to get creative with placement.

 

Nice, but I've got the Mickey Mouse setup [R57 with open-o-meter on the left & Garmin mount on the right]

 

I meant where did you buy the gauge, who's the manufacturer etc.

Sorry I wasn't clear!

 

Woops, misunderstood. Here you go →

 

- though primarily for road trips (where I really do like to keep an eye on a more parameters than just "grocery getting runs".

I set mine up so it shows RPM, GPS speed (handy - a virtual heads-up display), battery voltage, engine coolant temperature, altitude (am I climbing or not?)

It's a very nice user interface and display, and has a bewildering number of optional displays and items it can monitor. Under $40...

 

Aeroforce gauge with Cravenspeed mount with seperate on/off switch for the OBD Port. Otherwise it's always on...

 

Looks good. Like the matched color illumination. How much was it?

Doesnt the gauge eventually turn off when it loses signal when car is off?

 

Aeroforce gauge was $284 and picked up the mount second hand from eBay. Unfortunately the Mini's OBD2 port is always on, so I had to install an extension cable with a built in on/off switch. The Cravenspeed gauge kit was going to run the same amount of money so I went with this instead.

 

Here's the Scangauge 3.

 

That thing looks HUGE! Could you get a shot of the whole dash to show the relative size?

 

Sorry, I deleted that picture, but here is the scangauge2 I have on my R56 justa. The scangauge2 is the same width as the 3. The 3 is about 3 times taller.


Craven Speed makes mounts for the SG2 and SG3.

 

Here's a pic of the '12 Cooper S; with Scangauge 3.

 

I installed a GlowShift temperature gauge. I didn't want the scan/ultragauge as it uses the same sensor as the warning light, and did want a gauge with an analogue needle display. Why? Well because while I know the sensor is installed measuring the temperature of the coolant as it exits the engine block (and not the engine itself), I'm hoping the behaviour of the needle will give me a warning of any potential issues. I also don't really care about the accuracy of the gauge (well so long as it is in the ballpark) as it's the behaviour I'm interested in rather than absolute accuracy. I'm also aware that if the thermostat remains closed (thus being a huge potential problem) than obviously the needle won't show the engine being hot, but again, this should be "abnormal" behaviour and should help me be tipped off something isn't quite right (hopefully before the warning light!!!).

Issues
One other wrinkle in this: I have an R57 convertible, so didn't have a ready space for the gauge on the instrument cluster (gee, thanks BMW for the immensely useful "openometer" which is so much more important and useful than a temperature gauge -grrrr, don't get me started...) I also ended up using a door pillar mount. It's OK but one criticism I have is that I have the gauge slightly protruding from this mount at an angle so I get a more direct view of it. I think the Mini door pillars aren't as slanted back as most other cars this door pillar mount is intended for.

Another issue is that the 7 backlit colour choices seem to be for every car backlight colour except of course for the Mini orange. While the gauge colour is white, the closest backlight match is red, and if I was really pernickety it would be annoying. However it's close enough to be fine for me (but again, perhaps not for everyone).

Lastly, this gauge due to its design is always backlit; it is intended to be brighter during the day, and dimmer once you turn the lights on. This means wiring it up to a feed that lets you know when the headlights are turned on. Easier said than done in the Mini -and something that really gave me pause for thought (the fuses for the headlights are part of the footwell module). In the end I had a eureka moment when I realized that I could simply see the gauge more than adequately when the backlight was dim even in the middle of the day, so just wired it up to the cigarette lighter so the gauge is always on a dim backlight when the ignition is on. Problem solved!