R32 Centre Gauges - Help Needed

[Scotty]

G'day All,

I need your help. As with most R33 owners, we face a problem of having an empty din once we pull the stock CD/Tape player and replace it with an aftermarket one.

Well, to overcome this, I have just bought a R32 triple gauges to fill the slot. Now the problem is, how do I get it to work?

Firstly, does anybody have the wiring loom for sale. I would be happy to purchase it. But anyway back to the point, how can I get it working.

Firstly the gauges, there's a volt meter, temperature meter, and a boost gauge. On the back, there is a wiring pattern that has the plugs for the gauges. What I was intending in the absence of the wiring loom, was to solder the wires directly on the board. I have tested this theory using a 9V battery and some wires. I can get the lights to work, as well as the volt meter directly off the 9V battery, and I guess I can copy the same thing off the car battery, but it gets difficult with the temperature, and especially the boost gauge.

When I tested the temperature gauge, with the 9V battery, the gauge just rose to the maximum. Can anybody advise on how I can get a sensor to get this working? Whenever I supply this one with people, albeit 9V, it just rises to the top.

As for the boost gauge, no matter how I wired it up, it would not move. Of interest the +'ve and -'ve terminals of the boost gauge was separate to the rest of the gauges. Can anybody please advise on how I can get this to work.

So yeah, there you go. Please help!!!

Thanks in advance.

[Guest RedLineGTR]

am also would like to do the same..any advice from people would be good..

[Jay95R33]

Scotty,

The gauges are all electrical gauges, not mechanical (as you can tell ).

And to get them working correctly (and reading correctly) you'll need to get hold of the factory sensors - most Nissan dealers can help you with that.

The temp gauge is for oil temp if that helps any.

With the boost gauge, you MIGHT be able to hook that upto your map sensor that the R33 GTS-t's has - but I'm not sure if the voltage range coming from the GTS-t map sensor will be the same that the RB26 would have. How many wires goes into the boost gauge?? 2?? 3??

Did you get the air con head unit to suit as well?? You know how the 3 gauge holder has a bit missing from the top right hand corner?

J

[Scotty]

G'day Jay,

Thanks for your detailed and prompt response. Firstly to avoid any confusion, the gauges came from a R32. so it didn't have the corner shaven off. Hence I did not need to get a new climate control. I'm planning to leave the climate control on top, have the 3 gauges in the middle, and to have my HU at the bottom.

Thoughts?

Anyway, when I plugged, the volt meter into the into the battery, it read 9V, so I presume its simply a plug and play type deal into the car battery. So that covers the first one.

Moving on, so Jay, if I ask a Nissan wrecker for a oil temp sensor, can I simply extend the cables and solder them on directly to the gauges?

Now for the boost gauge, please excuse my ignorance, but what is a map sensor, as I have no idea on how to connect to it. I'll try to get my hands on a digital camera, so you can see graphically, but from what I can see, there is are 3 terminals that I cannot account for. (after covering the lights, volt meter and temp meter)

Therefore I'm guessing 3 wires, but am not sure how a boost gauge is usually connected up. Any thoughts?

Thanks again. If anybody has any further insight, please do write.

Thanks!

[Jay95R33]

Ahhh, cool - I didn' realise that the R32 GTR gauges don't have the corner taken out. Good stuff

Re: the oil temp sender - when you ask for it from Nissan you'll have to order the one that is from the R32 GTR - just to make sure you get the correct one, as I'm not sure if the R33 GTR ones are the same etc... You'll also need to check where the oil temp sender to tapped into to read the temp of the oil.

It could be tapped into the sump, or even into the mount for the filter - I'm really not sure - hopefully someone on here can help with that one.. But the wires should be fine just to extend.

I'm not totally clued up on electrical gauges, so if anyone can confirm this please do.

I would say that to make a electrical gauge work you would need 2 or 3 wires. One for the earth, one for constant power, and one for the signal. Some may need just earth and a siganl wire (2 wire type)....

As for the volt meter, you just need earth and the signal (that's why the voltage meter is working when you put the 9v battery upto it).

The map sensor is the small black box that sits up in the top drivers side corner of the engine bay. It measures the presure/vacume that's in the manifold and converts that presure/vacume into a voltage and sends that voltage to the boost meter that's on your dash.

The factory map sensor has 3 wires on it (earth, power, and signal), so if we're REALLY lucky the signal wire from the map sensor will be in the same range that the GTR boost gauge is and may work by just extending the wires (hoperfully the output of the map sensor will take the extra - even if very small - load).

If you can take a pic of the gauge cluster and post if up it'd be great.

How many terminals are on the back of the gauge cluster?

If you can post up a pic and detail what you have already found out (what terminals are for the volt meter etc) we can try and work something out.

J

***EDIT - just to throw a spanner in the works, the gauge cluster could use common earths and power for the three meters too !!! we really need to see the back off the meters, or know how many terminals are there ***

[Scotty]

Jay,

Thank you again for your detailed reply. It's great knowing that there are guys willing to help chumps like me out.

I'll try to get hold of a digital camera tonight so that I may post some pics here.

FYI, yes it looks like there is a common ground wire. What are the implications of that? There are I guess 4 distinct sections on the back of the gauge, illumination, volt meter, temp meter and boost gauge.

Whe I tested the Illumination, it had a seperate +'ve and -'ve terminals. But to get the volt and temp meter working, I used the same ground connection, or what the gauge refers to as Ignition.

As for the boost gauge, there is a positive and negative terminal, but there looks like 2 postive ones which I cant explain. I guess, this will make more sense once I post a picture up tonight.

Thanks again!

[RON-15H]

does anyone know in sydney were i can get this done i just purcahse one on the weekend tell ya the truth my install is a bit bodgggy i would like it to be professionally installed with 2 out 3 guages to work i have the r33 gtst and this guages came out of the gtr33 so i have that little peiece missin also. any recommendation around sydney west area?

[Scotty]

G'day Jay,

Sorry its taken me so long to reply. I've only just been able to borrow a digital camera. Anyway, here is the gauge

Anyway, my immediate concern is with the boost gauge. Given where the word was written, I could not determine where the positive connector is.

Illumination is easy, there is a definate +'ve and -'ve terminals. The volt and temp meter use the same ground, (or ignition).

Given that, there are 3 terminals that I cannot account for. They are on the left hand side, that is the 1st, 3rd and 4th one. Please refer to the picture

Hearing your thoughts that the boost gauge requires three connections, has gotten me thinking that the word Boost +'ve was written there deliberately to cover both terminals.

So, what do you think?

Thanks again bud!

[Jay95R33]

OK,

I'll give it a go. But without it here in front of me, probing it with a multimeter I'm stabbing in the dark a little, but we'll see how it goes.

From you comments above, it looks like you've got the lights and the volt meter worked out. That just leaves the temp and boost gauges.

You said before that if you hook up the 9v battery to the temp meter it just swings around to full deflection. So I would say that it'll need the oil temp sensor to work.

The oil temp sensor will send a voltage to the meter which varies up and down depending on the temp of the oil, eg. oil temp goes up, sensor detects the increase and relays that increase as a voltage to the meter - the meter then displays the increase by moving the needle up. To do more work on the temp meter you really need the oil temp sensor (from a R32 GTR).

For the boost gauge, it looks like it a 3 wire type. One of the wires is the ignition which looks like it's common on the board, that leaves two more (boost +ve, and boost -ve). The boost -ve one would be earth and the boost +ve would be the signal output from the map sensor.

Without looking at a wiring diagram for a R32 GTR it's a bit hard, but I would say that the earth would be the earth from the map sensor, the other being the siganl output from the map sensor. Some meters (maybe like this one) need the sensor earth and not just the common earth from the body or straight negitive.

I hope this helps, the best thing to do is buy yourself that oil temp sensor from a R32 GTR, and probe around the meters with a mulitmeter.

And if you can get your hands on a wiring diagram for a R32 GTR it would make it much eaiser.

Cheers

Jayson

[Rob]

Did anyone have any luck in completing this project?

I am keen to do the same thing with my 33.

[hippy]

if i had this thing i would be able to get it working if i had all the sensors ... and if the sensors are able to work on a gtst .. i have some very good people here at work that would know what they're doing

[Rob]

Buy one and get it working for us , then we will all come to you to get it done aswell

[Scotty]

Hippy, if only you were in Melb, I'd ask you to help me out. That's cool though. It's still definately on the agenda, again with a help of a few friends.

When it gets done, I'll post up a 'how to' guide here.

[nds]

Hippy, if only you were in Melb, I'd ask you to help me out. That's cool though. It's still definately on the agenda, again with a help of a few friends.

When it gets done, I'll post up a 'how to' guide here.

Bump to an old but gold thread.

Has anyone posted a 'how to' guide yet.

I have a couple of questions -

*Should the volt meter continue to read 12V once the car ignition is switched off?

*Can the aftermarket oil pressure sender still retain the factory oil light?

Any help appreciated.

[VXL]

How did you get the Voltmeter and Temp gauge to work? can u post pics?

I've got the boost gauge to work and can post pics and details up soon, this was done by luck btw haha