A few months ago, a friend of mine picked up one of these for his Ranger to add MPG, Distance To Empty, and other basic functions his truck was missing. I decided since I tow about 1700 lbs with my Rogue every weekend in the winter for hundreds of miles at a time, I figured maybe I should pick up something similar to keep an eye on my various temps on the car.
I looked at the ScanGauge as well as the Ultragauge my friend picked up. Now, I'm a firm believer that you get what you pay for and would always rather spend more for the quality product. The ScanGauge II is about $160 online, the UltraGauge is $60 online before $9 rebate.
EDIT: I should mention...this can read and clear CEL codes too! For just $60!
Buying:
I purchased mine direct from the manufacturer at http://www.ultra-gauge.com/ultragauge/index.htm
They ship exclusively through USPS Priority Mail if ordering in the US. (not sure what it'd be for you Canada guys) It shipped out within the next 2 business days and arrived on par with shipping time for USPS Priority.
Now....that rebate. I honestly didn't even bother messing with it. Didn't feel like messing with the hassle. I do know though that if you want to get your $9, you better follow their directions TO THE LETTER. I've heard of it taking people multiple tries to get it...the final time being the time they followed the directions to every detail, and then they received their rebate. One nice thing about the rebate is that they credit it back to your card instead of sending you a check in the mail.
Install:
Install is very simple. You plug the cable into the diagnostics port that's tucked at the bottom of the dash on the driver's side, just above your feet. (don't worry, the cable comes off of the left side of the plug instead of the middle/top. So your feet aren't gonna hit the cable ever) When you plug it in and turn the car on, the gauge goes through a discovery phase where it discoveres all the available gauges for your car. You then have the option to do a specific car setup procedure to tune the gauge for things like MPG, trip, DTE, TTE (time till empty), etc. I chose not to do this since I only wanted it to view real-time readout information. I'll stick with the Rogue's trip computer for MPG, trip, DTE, etc.
For the cable routing, I just pulled it over to the left, near the door jamb, and folded the cable up twice, and stuck it in the weather-stripping a bit as you can see in the pic below:
Not the cleanest cable routing, but I've never had an issue with the cable getting caught/coming loose. (been installed for a few weeks now) Also, you don't at all see it when the door is closed, and even when getting in/out, I don't notice it. For cleaner cable routing, you could bundle up the cable under the dash, then stick just the 1 cord in the weather-stripping on the door.
For mounting, it includes the following mounts:
A Suction mount, and some velcro strips. Since suction mounts tend to not work in -20 in the winter, I decided that wasn't for it. I also decided against the velcro mount because I'm not a van of seeing something jiggle/vibrate when I'm driving. Also, it would require mounting it flat on the surface, and there was nowhere I really wanted to mount it like that.
What I chose to do was cut a small, about 4"x2" strip of lexan with the bandsaw, and then bend it into an L-bracket by setting it over the edge of a brick, then heating it up with a heat gun until gravity bent it into an L. I then used double-sided tape to apply it to the back of the gauge, and then to the dash. Caution: You better use some damn good tape. I initially used some 'servo tape' I had laying around (GOOD servo tape at that) back from my RC days. It's a double-sided foam tape primarily used to absorb vibrations. On any day above 50, after leaving it sitting for 5 minutes or more, I'd come back to find the gauge had fallen over from the tape not holding with the heat.
Ended up picking up some Scotch brand 'Outdoor Mounting Tape' from Lowe's. Haven't had a problem since. The tape is gray against my black dash, which is less than ideal, but you can only tell from looking in from outside the vehicle.
Anyway, here's a pic of it mounted:
Operation:
There's 3 buttons on the back. One is a general menu/select/enter button, and the other two are general page up/page down buttons. They're located on back, near the edges, so mounting my L-bracket between them wasn't an issue.
The gauge can display up to 6 different gauges on one screen. You do have multiple screens you can switch between, but I'd rather just have it on 1 screen and not try to switch screens while driving.
The following are pictures of all the different gauges available to display:
The letters by the gauge items are the ones I have displayed on mine. Items A and B will be the top ones that are shown larger than the other 4.
One gauge that it does NOT display unfortunately is the transmission temperature. However, it's unable to display this from almost all manufacturers due to the wiring/programming of the diagnostic port. So I really wasn't expecting to be able to read the trans. temp, but was hoping to. Oh well.
Some of the gauges are a bit less useful than you'd think unfortunately. The engine load % doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me since it claims it can be at 89% load @ 2000 rpm w/ minimal throttle applied. It is however useful for a baseline comparison. (% normal cruising, vs cruising w/ trailer...head winds vs tail winds, etc) The fuel level % gauge is too depressing I find since it seems to drop .1% every second when driving in my hilly city, lol. I'm still playing around with the gauges and using them for a few weeks at a time to decide which ones I think are most useful.
There's also several settings and calibrations you can make to the device. I've honestly never even opened the instruction booklet, so I'm not even sure of all of them. (yes, the device is that intuitive that you don't really don't need to read the instructions unless you're calibrating it to the vehicle) I did discover last night that you can adjust the backlight level though! Great adjustment to have there.
Pros:
-Cheap...dirt cheap.
-Can read/clear trouble codes
-Lots of gauges to choose from
-Easy to read screen in any condition
-Lots of gauges displayed on one screen
-Ability to adjust screen contrast/brightness and set it to auto-adjust brightness or manually set it on a certain level
-Can read and display more gauges than the ScanGauge II
Cons:
-Some gauges less useful than you'd think
-In my opinion, honestly not all that vital of a device to have. But it was cheap, it's cool and fun to watch.
Like I said, this is just a quick overview of this nifty and super inexpensive device I picked up. I've been very pleased with it, and am glad to have it--especially glad to have the ability to view my battery voltage again...really missed that from my truck. When I'm out in the middle of nowhere in the Alaskan wilderness in the winter, I damn well want to know how my battery is doing.
Another use I had in mind was that thread a few months ago discussing how long to leave the Rogue idling in the winter. I can't say what you'd want your engine temperature to be before taking off, but maybe some expert such a Philipa can chime in on that one?
Let me know if you have any questions!
. The gauge has been swapped into a Titian and he still uses it. I dont think hes run into any problems with it. IS there anything specific youre looking into monitoring and how often would you use it? The problem with having lcd's in the extreme cold is that the screens can crack and wearing gloves makes it a little difficult to work with. But with a simple lcd screen like that, you dont have to worry as much. If you arent seriously concerned about monitoring your systems all the time(such as when youre towing a lot of weight or think something might be wrong) and have a smart phone then the $20 bluetooth obdll module is the way to go for sure.
