OK I'm beating a dead horse here but I am a little gauge ****. We took a nice little 3 hour drive the other day through the NY/CT countryside and I noticed I kept hunting for the gauges like oil pressure and water temperature and voltage. As mentioned before with all of my other fun cars this was an area which you had to keep an eye on and now I'm trying to ween myself of this habit. So with all of the technology (BT , etc.) and the ability to load up contact lists and destinations why wouldn't it be possible to hack in the ability to show a working gauge set on the nav screen and make it an option screen. Lets say 4 gauges , oil pressure , water temp. , voltage and boost pressure. I'm not a computer/SW expert (although I worked in the S/C industry) but surely someone could do it. If not I guess I'll have to go into rehab to resolve my habit. LOL

 

Yes it definitely can be done. I do not have the time at the moment, but I can post a description of a general approach in the next few days.

I did something similar on my X100, see https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...raffic-49241/? . There are significant differences on the X150, plus the equipment I used on the X100 is no longer available.

 

Enjoy driving the new car. If there is something wrong with the information normally seen with guages, the car will tell you with a warning. With a $100,000+ car, Jaguar didn't leave out warning alerts. Change is always difficult, just enjoy the ride, and don't worry about oil pressures, voltage, temps etc.

Be sure to get a smart battery maintainer and you won't have to worry about voltage, unless something major goes wrong like modules or sensors failing.

One point about the forum here. The more you read about electrical, battery problems and other topics posted here, the more any Jaguar owner can worry about potential problems that might arise on their own cars.

I have thought about selling my own XKR because sometimes I get caught up with the psychology of the posted problems I constantly read here. You have to get to the point that these Jaguars are premium cars and that the manufacturer has covered the thought of potential problems. I am over these worries of everytime I drive the car, I think something might go wrong. Now I just drive the car and enjoy the ride and owning a premium automobile. If something goes wrong, I will deal with the problem when it happens, otherwise why worry.

 

You both have very good points, as I also miss having gauges. On the other hand in this day and age there is no need to even look at them unless you are trying to diagnose a problem. If I need to do that I just plug in a OBDII device and a check to see whats going on. Although I have to admit a temp gauge and boost gauge would be nice as these cars run hot on the track, but on the street I doubt I'd look at them.

 

Great and looking at whitexkr's post it looks doable but I wouldn't want to rip out and install an aftermarket system. I like the gauge set on the screen. I have a Lexus and one of the issues with the nav system is it is unusable when you are moving. Someone over on that site hacked the nav disk and deleted the "gray out" feature which didn't allow functions while moving. So I was wondering if you could somehow hack the existing system to include a BT feature which puts an active gauge set on the screen when you want it. As i said I don't know if this system can be hacked but it would be cool to have added this feature.

 

 

If I could get engine telemetry on my nav screen, I will be some lovely wine to whomever can get that going! This should've been a mandate from Jaguar in their design.

Screen saver with iconic Jaguar imagery should've been done as well.

 

sure, but unless it was changed in the later models, the oil pressure switch triggers at something like 7psi. far too late to do anything but check the expiry date of the Black Amex.

 

Guys, just have that information display on your smart phone, that's what I do. I have a mount for my phone that attaches to the windshield via suction cup and the phone is right under the rear-view mirror. You can display whatever you want, air intake temp, water temp, voltage, etc. I'll post a pic after lunch if you're interested.

 

So what can someone do? If it happens it happens, why worry?

You can't take back what happened yesterday, and you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.

 

Big Otter:

Great idea....didn't know it even existed.

Yes, I would like to see your setup. And also how you got the smart phone to link up to the data. Is it an app? or something you have to connect to the car telemetry itself?

 

There is a device that plugs into the OBDII port that broadcasts to your phone via Bluetooth. Then there's an app you put on your phone. That's it!

I'll take pictures of what you need after lunch, but I'll have to wait until I get home to take a picture of what the display looks like, since I need a separate camera to take a pic of my phone.

 

There is absolutely no excuse or reasoning other than cost for the manufacturer to exclude the temperature gauge. That to me is over the top pathetic. Yet, if we happen to cook the engine, the manufacturer has all their loopholes lined up for fault and liability conveniently shifting to the owner.

 

Yep , great and we'd like to see it. I've been reading BT gauge/data programs and how they work with smart phones and tablets. I think they are cool but I would like to see this data be displayed on the nav screen as an option that you could call up when you wanted. I don't think it will work with my flip phone anyway , LOL

 

I would be very grateful for this information. I would like to be able to catch a problem when it first occurs ( coolant/ oil leak) before it reaches alarm point. I'll send you a nice bottle of wine as well.

 

I use the ELM327 bluetooth OBDII reader with the Torque Pro app loaded on smart phone or tablet. You can set up the display to show multiple sensors including STFT and LTFT

Still learning all the tricks but think it would suffice - all for under $20

 

Well for one thing, install an aftermarket oil pressure gauge.

An oil pressure gauge can tell you a lot by the way the needle is behaving well before an idiot light would turn on. For example, a needle that flickers on a onramp where it has never done so before is likely low oil.

A steadily dropping needle is likely a leak. Time to pull over and investigate.

A voltmeter that reads below 12.2v in key position one, possible no start at the far end of your journey.

 

Yep and it looks like a great app and would have more uses then just the gauges. I looked at that which got me thinking why can't you send a BT signal using the ELM to the nav screen to display the data. If you can send your contact list to the BT phone feature and read them on the screen why wouldn't you be able to do it with the ELM. Just thinking out loud .

 

OBD II will indeed provide most (and very cheaply) but can't do oil pressure as there's no sensor. As posted, fit one if you like

An elm can also report batt volts.

 

Yeah, but: from experience, most of us don't look at the gauges until we know there's a problem, usually because a fault indication light comes on. The impeller on my XK8's water pump failed, but I didn't notice until the red warning light came on. The gauge was reading pretty high by then, but I hadn't noticed - concentrating on speed & other traffic, as you tend to on a motorway.

Weirdly, the 5.0 manual makes no reference to an oil pressure sensor, so I don't think it has one. Instead, there are other systems which rely on oil pressure, particularly the variable valve timing, which will give alerts if the pressure is too low.