UltraGauge Owners

Cool! Thanks I appreciate it. Will be trying this out on Friday... With my first official tuneup

 

where is the ultra gauge HQ at anyone know? as in where does it ship from? just curious i just ordered mine and this is one of the first times ive went to a companies web page and it doesnt have a phone number or physical address

 

Never noticed that, I probably should have checked my box...

 

well i was just wondering if i might get it before this weekend, that way i could install it and calibrate it this weekend. I ordered it yesterday morning at about 7am central time hopefully it will process and be on the road before today.... btw how hard is it to calibrate this thing? do you need a masters from MIT?

 

Nope, just hop on your local freeway. Pull up to the side of a mile marker and reset the distance on the gauge. Then drive for a few mile markers and pull up to one of them and go into the calibration menu and tell it exactly how many miles you drove

 

Not a masters but you do need to follow a few steps. It can be a little confusing but if you just take the time to read it then it makes sense.
If you have oversize tires you can calibrate for that. I still haven't bothered setting mine up completely because i just haven't had the time to play with it.

It's 56 pages.
lots of reading and info.

 

well got my UG yesterday in the mail and got it installed last night after work. gotta say never would have guessed the hardest part of the install would have been getting the little protective cap off the obdII port. got it configured and all in just a few minutes now all i guess i need to do is calibrate the distance this weekend unless i should calibrate other things as well???

 

Is anyone saving $ by using UG? what other benifit?...thanks

 

Probably not and knowledge. You can monitor a lot with them.

 

Mine works great.

I have since customized the layout and brightness.

 

% engine load is pure gold when accelerating.

Mine paid for itself on my Honda. With a little study of my driving habits my avg mileage on that car went from 33 to 42 mpg. When I pulled a 48 mpg tank on cruise control with a car EPA rated 28/34, well you can imagine I was more than a little ecstatic.

I know it's saved me a lot of gas money on this truck. How many people driving 4.0L 4WD 6spds do you know that commute 2.8 miles to work (that's a fillup every 3 weeks) and consistently get 19-20 mpg on summer gas / 18-19mpg on winter gas on that commute? So much of that is knowing what gear is best for which speed.

I almost always get less mileage on the highway than I get in town, FWIW.

The way I drove without the UG I'd be getting 12 mpg right now. I used to love the G-forces. If that's the case then this thing has paid for itself twice just since I bought the Taco.

As for other indicators...

Coolant temp is nice. You don't feel heat out of the HVAC until the engine is at least 125ºF, so really you can speed the time you and the engine warm up by keeping the dial on C until then.

I thought the ignition advance was pointless to have up until I started noticing bad mileage days at random, and advance would top out at 23-24º instead of the 28-31º it would normally go to. I found the ECU will pull timing after cold start for some reason (light the cats?) and then push it back up 0.5º/sec as far as it can to determine the knock resistance of the fuel it has. Takes about a minute or so. If the engine isn't allowed to idle until it gets to the maximum advance, it will halt the test and apparently apply its current setting to the maps. This was what was giving me the crappy mileage when I'd just start and go. It won't re-test until after the engine was well warmed up and before then I'd get home.

 

Has anyone else tried this?
http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/technical-chat/184539-ultragauge-led-swap.html

I can't find any 0806 LEDs, will any others work?

Also is it worth getting the new version? I still have the old one

 

Here's my question. Have the gauge in my civic now, but would like to put it in my truck. Have a 2012 tacoma, only had the truck a week. But I can't find the darn plug for the the gauge. Where is it? A little help please.

 

Is it not right up under the plastic above the e-brake pedal where it usually is? Has a plastic cover on it that can be a pain to pop off.

 

It's there, it's got a cover over it. I have one on my 2012.

 

Wbat % engine load are you finding most efficient on your Taco?

 

With premium gas it's less of an issue. 75% to 83% seems best. It really feels like it's advancing cams and bumping fuel at 85%.

On regular gas my truck would always yank timing at 81% so I'd have to keep it under that to keep my cruising mileage up. It's fast to take timing away and very slow to give it back.

Still sticking with the ~1800 rpm shift points. Staying at or above 19.5 mpg in the middle of winter so I must be doing something right.

Before anyone asks, I only switched the TC and tranny to synthetic a week ago. Small improvement. The pigs still have toyota's dino oil in them.

I need to take a vid of the ignition roulette this thing does on cold startup... I think if people saw that they wouldn't just pop it gear and drive. It really does cost gas in the long run to do that.

 

I'd like to see that... I started looking at the timing advance gauge after reading your post about it.. but I'm not really clear on what I'm seeing.
It creeps down if I idle for a few mins after start.. I know that much.

 

I'm wondering if it's lighting the cats by pulling timing. What I don't understand is why the timing will stay down for a long time (like, half an hour of driving or more) if it doesn't finish that process.

I ticked my ECU off the other day by not waiting long enough and it's been pulling timing again. Won't give me the 30 degrees of advance at cruise like it had been, went down to about 26 at 2000 rpm (which means a loss of 4 mpg), but it's coming back around. Was up to 29 last night.

video is up

http://youtu.be/paHc19TUcJ8

 

Thanks for the vid. So wait until it comes back up to over 20... ok. I initially thought lower was better... Didn't really understand what that reading even meant.. still not 100%.

Also a few posts back you said:
"Coolant temp is nice. You don't feel heat out of the HVAC until the engine is at least 125ºF, so really you can speed the time you and the engine warm up by keeping the dial on C until then."

Care to elaborate? Would that only matter if the HVAC fan was on?

Thanks the the info!