Going to add the sorely lacking boost and oil pressure gauges to my current project. I've installed gauges on various projects however, I figured I'd ask to see if there were some "ideal" installation tip or tricks you all might have encountered or wish you had done differently. The engine is still out of the car so I have lots of space to work and route the lines. I'll be using a 3d printed set of "cups" to mount the gauges on the steering column.

Thoughts?

 

Should you decide on Mechanical gauges:
Oil pressure gauge = Your budget = your choice. Autometer or Cravenspeed seems to be in the mid range and some actually match/compliment the existing factory gauges in the 1st Gen Mini.
Oil pressure line = Copper. No if ands or buts - (enough said).
Boost Gauge = Again your choice
Boost line = Use a "Tee" connector made of black polypropylene. (O Reilly has them) Do Not opt for that Dorman brand crap. They are brittle and WILL fail. For boost piping I used/ran silicone. It's heat resistant. I custom made my inlet to the brass gauge inlet/coupler using a 1/8" length of brass tubing. You can source small brass tubing through Amazon or a good local hobby shop.

Being a "new traditionalist"; I can't offer much advice in the way of digital.

 

All I can say is I have a Marshall electronic boost gauge for Alex’s car still to install. Thing LOOKS flipping sweet.

I ordered a pair of 3D printed cups on amazon or eBay for $20 figuring I’d use one and he could use the other.

I was wrong. They only fit the smaller NAV/Chrono pack column mounts like min3 has…and arms between mounting holes and cup are too short by about 3mm or so to properly fit Alex’s larger single tach.

I also was not enthused by how rough these 3d prints are, sanding, possibly body filling and resanding are going to be required to smooth the layers out. Amd as it turns out, from my seating position, I can’t really see the bloody gauge pod, not more than half of it thru the wheel. since his marshal guage truly matches in color amd style to OEM, I’m seriously considering a 3D printed vent pod for next to center Speedo. There is someone who sells them sintered and finished already for extra instead of the rough print.

 

Good info! I have the cups and the gauges already. I have gauges from Autometer. The oil pressure is electronic and digital and the boost is standard. I was going to do both standard but I did not want to deal with the plumbing of the standard oil pressure (and the price was right too!)

Just want to make sure I am not trying to reinvent the wheel with the routing or install if others have done it successfully and maybe had ideas on how they would have done it different knowing what they now know.

 

I kind of like Air/Fuel ratio gauges as well. I don't have one yet but I think it would provide useful information in certain driving conditions. Since your engine is out, it wouldn't be too difficult to pull the header and find a location for the wideband sensor to go. Of course, you would need to get a bung and have someone weld it on.

 

One tip I’ve gathered is not to mount the oil temp/ pressure sender direct to the adapter, apparently either the heat or vibrations will cause early failures. Mount it remotely and securely using copper tubing with a coil in it to absorb movement and vibration.

other than that it’s easy enough to jump up into the black plastic “box” and then run your wiring over to drivers side to go thru the cab grommet.

for boost everyone seems to run across the VC first under the IC then back to the plastic box and thence to cab grommet. I did see a tip about NOT using the hard white plastic Ts that come with gauges and get a black plastic one instead as they are less heat sensitive and fragile.
Made sense to me.


I won’t be installing Alex’s boost gauge till October as it is a birthday gift. I just bought it early!

will look forward to your future posts and I’m always happy to add to my fund of second hand knowledge before I do something myself.

 

^^ I as thinking about AFR as well. I have a new header on the way and there are 2 bungs already there. Not sure where I'd install it and frankly, I do not have a comprehensive understanding of stoic and how exactly to read or adjust. (I don't fool with tuning as my computer skills are very limited)

 

I like the way the stock dual gage fits under the switches, I have it in my JCW. I plan on getting the same mount for my red MCS and using afr gauge and boost. Just havent got around to purchasing them yet.

 

I installed a couple of gauges over the past few days and was going to start a thread to post my experience. Then I found this one.

TLDR: my experience with mechanical gauges makes me wish I had spent the extra money on electrical gauges. Electrical gauges seem like they would have been easier to install, particularly the in-cabin portion of the install.

I installed Autometer Ultra-Lite gauges - boost and water temperature. I chose them because they match my speedometer and tachometer almost perfectly. Within the Ultra-Lite set, I chose mechanical gauges instead of those that use stepper motors to move the needle in response to input from a sensor. The mechanical gauges were much cheaper and also, I felt that mechanical gauges would be more reliable.

Maybe, but..

more on that later.

I was in the middle of a (another ) supercharger replacement so I took advantage of service mode to do the gauge installation.

I have a Cravenspeed tachometer mount dual pod and a couple of individual pods from ECS Tuning (that also mount to the tachometer) but I used the Cravenspeed pods for this job. I bought the Cravenspeed pods from the marketplace and there were no instructions with the kit. I don't know if instructions ever came with with the pods or not, but it seemed pretty straightforward. It seemed the pods place the back of the gauges with little to no clearance for the lighting wires or the input tubing. Frustrating. I removed the trim behind the tachometer to modify it to fit everything. Not real happy about that. After I had modified the trim piece and was about 80% done with the cabin installation, I was wondering why the bolts that mount the pods to the bracket were so long. Then I remembered seeing a couple of plastic spacers that are about 3/4" long and would take up most of that excess bolt length. Doh! Those push the pods away from the dash!! Now I have a hole and a slot cut in that trim piece for no reason.

This is where "80% done" comes into play. I had run the tubing for the boost pressure gauge into the cabin through the grommet where the clutch line and a small wire harness pass into the engine bay. That was pretty simple. The mechanical water temperature sensor has a relatively large probe and retaining nut that must pass into the engine compartment somewhere. As is often the case when I am working on my daily driver, the luxury of time to find the ideal spot for things is something I don't have, so I decided I would have to find some way to get it through that same grommet as the boost line. I could see it would fit but it was going to be a struggle.

With the temperature probe in the engine compartment now, I switched to supercharger installation until I had the upper radiator hose installed. This is where I had planned to mount the adapter for the temperature probe. That was scary but it worked. Now with the supercharger installation basically complete, I remembered I still had not connected the boost tubing to the boost gauge. Once I had the boost gauge circuit installed, I found I could not level the boost gauge with those brass couplers and nylon hose coming out of the back of the gauge! I had to clock it about 20 degrees or so from level. This was a reason to slot that trim piece again but because of time constraints, I did not. So my boost gauge is not level.

This and the working with the temperature probe and its associated stiff tubing is when I decided I should have bought the electric gauges. With only electrical wires going into the back of the gauges, it would have been a much easier install inside the cabin, at least to mount these gauges where I mounted them. I believe the temperature sensor for the electronic water temperature gauge is much smaller than the mechanical probe and that difference in size would have given me more options on where to mount the probe.

I have not wired in the backlighting for the gauges yet. YouTubers show splicing into the instrument cluster wiring for the gauge lighting. I am not a big fan of that right now. If I can find mounting locations, I would like 4 more gauges - engine oil temperature and pressure, fuel pressure and air/fuel ratio. That last gauge I already have. My concern with splicing into the instrument cluster lights is current draw, specifically, will that circuit be able to power all those gauge lights if I end up with 6 gauges? Wiring diagrams I find on that lighting circuit show the module with fuse protection but not the lighting circuit by itself. My plan is to splice into a parking light circuit to run a relay which in turn would power up the lights from a dedicated, protected circuit. I have the bus bar, the relay, the fuse and wiring but installing that will be its own mini project.

As of now, my gauges function - without back lighting for night driving - but there is more work to be done before this installation meets my standards of quality. On the road test after this work, a problem with my car not related to the gauges presented itself. I will have to deal with that problem before the gauge issues. That is a different topic though.

 

I spliced in for illumination at the radio (and 12+ ignition and ground) , but Chili has the Marshall exact match electronic units with led lighting so they respond correctly to the PWM dimming for the instrument cluster and the radio LED dimming. If led I suggest the same.

if yours are bulbs, tap into the cig lighter illumination bulb. Near as I can tell it’s the only one that is analog and filament bulb in the dash area! Or switch it to an LED and tap the radio illumination, it has more than enough excess capacity to run a good many more LED. Especially since you are probably not running your cluster at full bright all the time!

 

Oh, and for boost, I did NOT run the supplied clear plastic tubing across the VC to drivers side and thence back to the under dash grommet., for one it was too damn small, for another I hate that stuff and that routing. I went straight back on the passenger side with rubber hose so I could bundle to the existing evap system tubing, into the rear cowl box area and to my boost pressure transducer mounted there, then all the wiring runs across to the upper body grommet. Pop out the cowl vent and you can punch thru semi easily and then it is very high up on the firewall where it comes in, so no issues with rubbing against moving parts etc.