anyone played with boxster gauge cluster? Options

[skeates]

Hey guys - I'm not sure if this is a subject that has been beaten to death before (I certainly wasn't able to find any threads on it), but has anyone here ever attempted to make use of the boxster or cousin 996 gauge clusters in a conversion? I was able to find a pin-out diagram for the boxster cluster which makes it look doable. Just curious if there was any fancy shmancy communications between the cluster and the ECU that would need to be worked around?

[ruby914]

Nice work Skeates!

The Boxter cluster up against the OE bezel looks great. The cluster looks nice and small, the biggest problem may be the depth. I don't recall how much room you have to work with, the Boxter looks small but deep.
For the bottom you could trim some off the lower dash sub frame and remove or remake the top loop. I removed my top loop and the cluster mounts to the bottom of the dash.
It seems like, with a custom bezel, it would look great in the OE dash.
What motor is going in this car? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/popcorn[1].gif)

[skeates]

Not that it matters now, since you have been experiencing success with your interface using the Arduino, but what I was referring to with the use of the OE gauge guts was to place the guts behind the gauge face in place of the original, put the Boxter needle on the shaft of the OE unit, and then use the original tank sender. I see this as simple, but not nearly as much fun, nor elegant (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) The problems I foresee doing this are possible length of shaft of OE too short, needle wont work on shaft, sweep ark of OE not same as Boxter and thus gauge face will not be correct measurement/needle deflection will be incorrect, OE guts will not fit.

With your initial start up causing needle bounce, is it possible to have a value programmed in to make the needle hold a value consistent with the E at start up? How bout Full and then is drops to actual? Is this bounce of the needle stop due to poor or no signal? Does the stock setup in a Boxter do this, or is this just due to your interface? How about a delay in the interface that allows it to power up before sending a signal to the gauge so that there is no "seizure" on start up?

That's a good suggestion as it sidesteps the need to get elbow deep in electronics and coding. Since I followed this route I'm not sure about how well OE motor would fit into the Boxster cluster's frame. It's pretty tight in there and the whole assembly would need to fit neatly sandwiched between the face and the electronics board. If I can get those spare internals from you (and folks are interested), I can mock it up to see how well things fit - I imagine it'll be pretty obvious once one puts them next to each other.

On the needle bounce - from what I gather it's somewhat of an evil necessity for an open loop stepper motor system. I believe that the boxster cluster has some pretty sophisticated electronics that can keep better track of the needle position, but it still has to zero the needle - though it doesn't seem to bounce the way mine does. I think it has to do with the fact that the OEM electronics are able to drive the motor in mircro-steps rather than in the half-steps that I am limited to. Last night I did a bit of research on stepper motor integrated circuits as I'd like to fashion a better hardware solution than what I currently have. If I can get that working it should be pretty easy to reproduce for interested folks. Obviously I would also post all the info hear for anyone wanting to DIY.

Nice work Skeates!

The Boxter cluster up against the OE bezel looks great. The cluster looks nice and small, the biggest problem may be the depth. I don't recall how much room you have to work with, the Boxter looks small but deep.
For the bottom you could trim some off the lower dash sub frame and remove or remake the top loop. I removed my top loop and the cluster mounts to the bottom of the dash.
It seems like, with a custom bezel, it would look great in the OE dash.
What motor is going in this car? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/popcorn[1].gif)

I wish I had my OEM dash cap up here to check the fit of this cluster in the stock dash. I don't think depth will be an issue as it's not that much different than the stock gauges. Plus, the plugs have a much lower profile so one get's a little more room because of that. I think the difficult part is height. The indicator lights on the Boxster cluster stick out just below the OEM mounting face and I think the clearance issue would be with the top of the steering column rather than the dash subframe. But, if there is some wiggle room on top one might just need to build a custom bezel and be done! BTW, the car has a suby EZ36 in it - though I still have to fab exhaust and get it a computer before I can turn it on. My build thread is here.