- As our engines and the modern crop of aftermarket electronics have become more
and more complex, there's a lot more data going on that we as drivers and tuners need
to monitor in order to first of all make sure that everything's operating as it should,
as well as then looking at data to improve the performance of the engine, of the car
and of the driver.
But when it comes to options around doing this, this is where it can get a little bit
confusing.
There's a lot of options and places we can display and log our data and all of these come
with pros and cons as well as of course, some additional cost.
Now traditionally, when it comes to monitoring aspects of our engine performance,
this would have been done with a variety of analogue gauges.
Now the problem with analogue gauges is it makes it very difficult to notice instantly
if something goes wrong.
You literally have to be staring at the gauge when for example your oil pressure or your
fuel pressure drops to a dangerous level.
Now, if you're trying to concentrate on controlling the car instead, that can be
almost impossible.
Now of course some of these gauges do come with warning lights to bring your attention to
the fact something isn't right.
But with these analogue gauges, this again brings about a problem.
If we take for example just one of our sensors, the oil pressure.
Now our oil pressure is going to be relatively linked to our engine RPM and a good rule
of thumb here is that we should expect around about 10 psi of oil pressure per
1000 RPM.
So what this means essentially is that our oil pressure rises with our RPM.
Now if we were to use a simple warning light that comes on for example at 10 psi,
now that may work well at low RPM such as idle or cruise but if the oil pressure
drops to 10 psi at 6000 to 7000 RPM, we're probably already going to have done
damage to the engine before we can get off the throttle, clutch in and potentially
save the engine.
Now this is where a driver display comes in.
A driver display can display all of the data from the ECU as well as potentially other
sensors in a simple form that the driver can view.
Now under normal circumstances the driver's really not going to be watching the
oil pressure as they're going around the racetrack, it's not really any different to the
analog gauge situation I mentioned before.
Under normal conditions, the driver's going to be monitoring the shift light which is
normally going to be at the top of the dash, letting the driver know when to change gear.
However, because of the electronic controls within these dash units, this can be set up
with some smart warnings.
So for example with the oil pressure that I talked about before, we could set up the
dash display to bring up a driver warning if the oil pressure drops below 10 psi and
the RPM is let's say below 3000 RPM.
However if the RPM is above 4000 RPM, we may want to bring that warning in if the oil
pressure drops below let's say 30 psi.
So this gives a much tighter envelope for that driver warning to come up and let
the driver know that something isn't right.
Of course, this could also go for engine temperature, air temperature, fuel pressure
and basically any input that you may want to monitor.
These sorts of drive displays have been around for a long time now.
Most often they're incorporated with a full logging unit.
So this allows all of the data from the ECU to be transferred through to the dash logger
as well as potentially other sensors to be added in, wired directly into the dash for
aspects of the chassis control to be monitored.
The problem with this is that while it's nice to have a central logging hub like this,
this does add to the cost of the component.
Another alternative here is a simple dash display.
So this does no logging and in the case of the Emtron unit behind me here, this is exactly
how this works.
So this interfaces with the ECU and in this case the ECU can be used for a central
logging hub.
Obviously the ECU already has all of the ECU sensors available directly for logging as well
as the ability to input aspects such as GPS for track mapping and lap timing.
Here, all of the communication between the dash and the ECU is done via a simple two
wire CAN bus, the dash will also need 12 volts of earth so in total there's only four
wires needed going to the dash, two of those communicating back to the ECU.
And to add to that control, this can also incorporate a CAN based keypad.
That CAN based keypad communicates with the ECU, allowing control of certain aspects,
such as for example your boost setting, your traction control setting or your
launch control setting.
And with the integration with these electronics, this can also be sent through
to the driver display so the driver knows exactly what's going on.
Now there is no right or wrong way to perform your logging and your driver displays but this
is certainly a really good cost effective way of getting you the data that you need
in a central logging hub in the ECU while also providing that driver display so the driver
knows what's going on.
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