Another How to: Satnav & boost on ignition and headlights.

[mikeyskona]

Well, my new toy finally turned up today, the Prosport Green / white boost gauge.. My satnav was wired into the illumination circut which was starting to get annoying as i couldn't turn the dash lights down without turning it off, lol.. So i decided to re-do it whilst i was installing my new toy with a how to (as requested), and i thought whilst i'm there i'll do one on wiring into the lights as well .

Before we start, i think my Ignition live for stereo is a different colour to most (i could see a join in the wire further back in the dash, so i'm assuming it's another bodge).... so if anyone else knows what colour it should be, please let me know and i will edit the post. Also before screwing about, make sure you have your radio code lol

Ok. Let's start off with the ignition live. Disconnect your battery and pull out your stereo and look for the ignition live wire (which in my case is yellow and red)

You will also need some way of joining all the wires together, i went out and bought lots of automotive crimp connectors and a set of crimps (always handy to have but not a cheap way to do it )

Once you know how you are doing the connecting (remembering you are going to be splicing in to this live) You want to splice in to it, or in my case, cut it and add some ends, with a double ender on 1 side.

You then want to splice in a new line, and feed that down (or up) to where your gauge and/or satnav wiring are going to be.. make sure you have more than 1 colour / type of wire, you dont want to be getting confused.
Now we want to wire in the light switch for our gauge,

Undo the 2 retaining screws for the vents holding the light switch, and remove the switching unit.

After lots of head scratching and fiddling about with a multimeter, confused that none of the wires seem to only have a feed when the lights are set to both "on" or "side" i finally found a handy little spade connector on the back of the actual switching unit itself that only sends a +12v feed when the lights are set to side or on, which was wired, and routed to the gauge area

I now have yellow/green as ignition live, and blue as Lights on.

Plop the satnav where you want it, and route a cable down to a cigarette lighter. I got mine from motorworld for about 7 quid, which had crodile clips on the end.. I took these off and put spade electrical connetors on the end. The cable was then routed with this on down to the centre console.

The prosport gauge comes with 4 wires, Green (green light), White (white light), Red (+ power), Black (ground). It's a clever little thing Green to live and white to lights is green, then when lights are on it goes white. Or white to live and green to lights is white, then green with lights on....

I want my gauge to light up white during the day, and green when the lights are on, so i wire the White into the +12v (red) and leave the rest ready to be connected up later.

Right. I already had a boost gauge, that was faulty, so i didn't really need to do the plumbing, but as this is a how to, i'll show you how it was done by the carss previous owner ... You need to find the feed circled above, and find a nice suitible place to snip it..

Plumb in the t-peice that came with the gauge, reconnect the line via the t-peice and run the hose that came with the gauge into the car somehow.. there are a few rubber gromits in to the cabin you can go through....

Now the hose should be in the car, ready to connect in to our gauge

Now position the gauge wherever you actually want it to go, and run the vaccum line / wires to it's position, We're now ready to connect everything up.

Ok... Now.... this is where it might get a little complicated, so please bare with me. You will need to find a ground (in my instance i ran to the ground of the cigarette lighter (black) to keep things simple, but generally any ground will do. You want to connect the Black and satnav cig socket to the ground.
You want to connect the Gauge live + lightoff colour wire (the ones we joined earlier) to our ignition live. You then want to connect the Lighton colour to the feed we ran from the light switch.

Now make sure you insulate everything you've done.. Black insulation tape will do the job nicely, just make sure you have no bare wire / connectors showing, then put your car back together. Switch it on and give it a quick test.

You can now enjoy the fruits of your labour....

Here's a little video of the install i just did there
http://www.mikeyskona.co.uk/extimgs/...v/boostnav.wmv

Although it wont be long before i'm ripping all this out, cause i want a nice shiny 2-din stereo that does the bluetooth / satnav etc etc all in one

[960kg]

......Super How To.....the finished result looks great.......just one thing if you get a problem with the needle of the gauge being unstable it is because the snip has to be as near to your first red circle as possible and 4mmm clear plastic hose is best as it is firmer......i suppose the rubber hose was in the kit, but it can make the needle pulsate as it squashes with the vacuum....if someone wants to mount there guage where you put your satnav there is a plug on the other side under the servo and the hose will come out inside the cabin above the clutch pedal.......Just trying to help!

[mikeyskona]

Thank you 960KG.

The original gauge was installed by the previous guy, so the hoses etc are all his....... I do have a new hose in the prosport kit that is unused (which is solid plastic)... when i can get hold of another bit of vacuum hose i will redo it... Thanks for the tip

Editing the original post now with your tip added.

edit: Ok no i wont edit the original post as there is no Edit button.... wtf? :\ lol

[mikeyskona]

Originally Posted by 960kg

......Super How To.....the finished result looks great.......just one thing if you get a problem with the needle of the gauge being unstable it is because the snip has to be as near to your first red circle as possible and 4mmm clear plastic hose is best as it is firmer......i suppose the rubber hose was in the kit, but it can make the needle pulsate as it squashes with the vacuum....if someone wants to mount there guage where you put your satnav there is a plug on the other side under the servo and the hose will come out inside the cabin above the clutch pedal.......Just trying to help!

Well.. Sat at some lights, i noticed my boost needle was starting to vibrate alot in vaccum.. So i took your advice and got some pretty solid plastic type piping, and ran that instead. Needle is spot on and steady now.

Thank you sir

[Volvon]

Great guide Mike, you make it look so easy

[mikeyskona]

Originally Posted by hyvää

Great guide Mike, you make it look so easy

That's cause it is, lol... but thanks