Roxanne - budget milano/75 track car

[AR4me]

Covered aluminum with black felt. Yes, you can use own buttons. These are far from as expensive as the remote start-stop since they don't contain status LED (I suppose). The set of 4 is same or less compared to the remote start-stop - they have open leads that have to be connected to the DASH2 plugs (which also have open leads).
Jes

[AR4me]

The back of the display takes M4 pitch 0.70 bolts. The anodizing of the aluminum casing had made it necessary to clean up the threads. Somewhat tricky to get the bolts to catch, but after that gradually working the bolts in, turning them back and forth, cleaned up the threads.

Test fitted the new instrument cluster in the dash - pics below.

Still need to tug up wires and hook up the wires for the DASH2, including building a little box with the necessary circuits (for my sensors).

Jes

[franksun]

Oh! NICE!

[jontg428]

Wow looks good! But is this a budget race car anymore lol!

[75evo]

Nice! But the buttons in the instrument binnacle looks to be hard to reach. I'll put the buttons on the wheel....hmmm I guess that means I need a new steering wheel or maybe the place where the fog light switches are.

[AR4me]

No problem reaching buttons. Note that I positioned the face further forward than the face of the stock gauges. The buttons are close to being same distance as the buttons on the side of the instrument cluster - tried it sitting in the seat before deciding to put buttons there.

Budget, maybe not so much, but everything is still "home made" to keep cost down. Otherwise, this would have been really expensive. From that perspective it is still quite budget.

Jes

[BigSwede]

You might want to add a "sun shade" to that, otherwise you will have quite a lot of problems I think.

[75evo]

Good suggestion Mats. But I wonder if the glare would be bad enough to obstruct the display? It's recessed quite a bit inside. But you never know, Mats could very well be right. It would suck for such an expensive equipment to be rendered useless due to glare. Maybe I'll extend the binnacle/cluster top section a little (using ABS plastic) to avoid the glare.

[AR4me]

I spent a ton of time on the wiring for the data-logger and dash display, as well as cleaning up obsolete wiring. I build a little box with the analog circuitry interfacing the DL1 with my sensors. I still need to configure the data-logger and display for the analog channels as well as program the sensor characteristics. Since the software still remains to be set up, I could not test it fully. I did power it up to check the basics - you get a default display configuration.

BTW, I doubt glare will be an issue. It is my understanding that they use these in open wheel cars with steering wheel/hub mount - I was actually considering mounting my display on the hub right at the steering wheel. Also, there is some shading - the earlier picture was taken with direct flash.

Jes

[Mezevenf]

Damn Jes, that is fancy! Making me jealous. My install I think will be somewhat messier!

[AR4me]

I finally got time to set up the the display - quite simple and straightforward. It has 5 screens you can toggle between. RPM, speed, gear selector, and warnings remain the same, but you can configure 3 fields on each screen. I currently set up 3 of the screens - see pics. The sector, lap, and delta times will briefly replace the 3 parameters as you pass GPS markers (virtual track markers). Sorry, no speed, revs, oil pressure, or fuel pressure showing since exhaust and driveshaft are currently off the car. Only negative is that the fields for parameter names are only 5 characters. Would be nice with more characters, or if you could choose from icons. Anyway, I like its functionality.

As you can see the water temp is a little off compared to engine and transmission oil temps - still need to replace the Milano sender with the actual164 sender I characterized. I suspect the difference is due to sender variability.

Jes

[AR4me]

I came across some of my in-car video from last event - Buttonwillow, April 2008. This was the first time I ran Buttonwillow counter-clockwise (the Alfa club doesn't run counter-clockwise due to the danger exiting the last turn - too many cars end up in the wall after going wide at the exit). We ran configuration 1, which was also new to me. The video is from Saturday's race, early afternoon, before we have had much chance to learn the track - maybe one practice session and qualifying.

I spent a big part of the race chasing a 24v GTV6.

<object width="425" height="350"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dxmUz5CN2Wk"> </param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dxmUz5CN2Wk" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"> </embed> </object>

Jes

[Grant]

Jes, your car hauls like a rocket on the straights! I can't wait to get some real tires and attack Buttonwillow again!

[AR4me]

Back to regular programming. Put back in the drive shaft, mounted the fuse panel in a new position (with that part of the dash gone), and wrapped up the last few bits in removing obsolete wiring in the dash.

Debating what to do with the exhaust...

Jes

[Alfissimo Int.]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AR4me I came across some of my in-car video from last event - Buttonwillow, April 2008. This was the first time I ran Buttonwillow counter-clockwise (the Alfa club doesn't run counter-clockwise due to the danger exiting the last turn - too many cars end up in the wall after going wide at the exit). We ran configuration 1, which was also new to me. The video is from Saturday's race, early afternoon, before we have had much chance to learn the track - maybe one practice session and qualifying. I spent a big part of the race chasing a 24v GTV6. <object width="425" height="350"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dxmUz5CN2Wk"> </param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dxmUz5CN2Wk" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"> </embed> </object> Jes