Boost gauge rant.

[Mid_Life_Crisis]

First off, I have not yet contacted the vendor or the manufacturer, so I'm not knocking either of them, I just need to vent my frustration.
After almost a frickin year, I finally broke down and bought a boost gauge so I can see what the turbo is really doing.
I bought a Prosport Premium because I liked the color match and wanted the "Peak hold" feature because it would make it so much easier to accurately monitor what I actually spike to. I finish the install yesterday afternoon and it works wonderfully. I drive to meet the wife for dinner and at every stop light I'm playing with the peak and the warning setting. I couldn't be happier. I come out of the restaurant and the gauge is dead. I disconnect all the wires and check them to make sure nothing has happened and when I connect the power and amber selector back, I get a white light with the needle pegged at maximum vacuum. No startup show and the needle does not move when I touch the gas. I am so pissed. I disconnected the power cable and later this morning I'll go out and double check the wires with a meter to make absolutely sure I didn't screw anything up, but I do a lot of this stuff, so I know the wiring is right.
Anyway, thanks for letting me vent.

 

[mckraut]

I'd contact Prosport, I understand their customer service is good.

 

[Mid_Life_Crisis]

I'd contact Prosport, I understand their customer service is good.

I'm going to. I just double checked the voltage at each of the pins and it is exactly correct, as expected. Now that I can say with absolute certainty that I didn't screw something up, I'll get on the phone.

 

[Mid_Life_Crisis]

I called Prosport and spoke with a very pleasant young fellow. I let him know that there was odd behavior from the get go, which I didn't mention in the original post. Plugging into different power ports produced different colors, which it isn't supposed to do. I described what happened and that I had double checked the voltages on the power connector and he told me to send it right in. A tech will look at it and they'll either fix it or replace it, assuming the tech decides that the unit is at fault, of course. Biggest pain in the butt about this is that I have to take the sending unit out too.

 

[mckraut]

I called Prosport and spoke with a very pleasant young fellow. I let him know that there was odd behavior from the get go, which I didn't mention in the original post. Plugging into different power ports produced different colors, which it isn't supposed to do. I described what happened and that I had double checked the voltages on the power connector and he told me to send it right in. A tech will look at it and they'll either fix it or replace it, assuming the tech decides that the unit is at fault, of course. Biggest pain in the butt about this is that I have to take the sending unit out too.

Actually I want to say I read somewhere that depending on which wires you hook up, you'll either get red or white gauge "tick marks" (dunno what else to call them).

Edit: I did some checking around and this is a true statement. Depending on which wires you connect for power, you'll get either amber or white. Some people have even rigged them to be amber during the day and white at night, or vise versa.

 

[Mid_Life_Crisis]

Actually I want to say I read somewhere that depending on which wires you hook up, you'll either get red or white gauge "tick marks" (dunno what else to call them).

Edit: I did some checking around and this is a true statement. Depending on which wires you connect for power, you'll get either amber or white. Some people have even rigged them to be amber during the day and white at night, or vise versa.

The instructions are clear. There are four wires in the power harness. Two are constant power and ground. The other two are orange and white, and depending on how you hook them up, you can have one color or the other all the time, or one color without the lights on and the other with. You decide which color is on by how you connect the wires. In my case, I decided that my dash lights are always amber, just lighter or darker depending on whether or not my lights are on, so I just connected the orange (amber) wire to Acc. so it comes on with the car starting. The gauges have two ports you can plug the harness into on the back. They are supposed to be wired identically so that you can jumper from one gauge to the next (they supply the short cable) and avoid a lot of wiring for the second or third gauge. Because the ports are supposed to be identical, it shouldn't make any difference which one you plug the power connector into (this is according to the instructions). It didn't work that way with my gauge. If I plugged into one, I got amber, into the other, I got white. It shouldn't do that, so clearly there was something wrong from the start. I just didn't realize how wrong.

 

[mckraut]

The instructions are clear. There are four wires in the power harness. Two are constant power and ground. The other two are orange and white, and depending on how you hook them up, you can have one color or the other all the time, or one color without the lights on and the other with. You decide which color is on by how you connect the wires. In my case, I decided that my dash lights are always amber, just lighter or darker depending on whether or not my lights are on, so I just connected the orange (amber) wire to Acc. so it comes on with the car starting. The gauges have two ports you can plug the harness into on the back. They are supposed to be wired identically so that you can jumper from one gauge to the next (they supply the short cable) and avoid a lot of wiring for the second or third gauge. Because the ports are supposed to be identical, it shouldn't make any difference which one you plug the power connector into (this is according to the instructions). It didn't work that way with my gauge. If I plugged into one, I got amber, into the other, I got white. It shouldn't do that, so clearly there was something wrong from the start. I just didn't realize how wrong.

Ahh, gotcha. Well good luck with the gauge. Hopefully they will take care of you.

 

[Mid_Life_Crisis]

Ahh, gotcha. Well good luck with the gauge. Hopefully they will take care of you.

Where I shipped the gauge from screwed up the address so it finally got to ProSport. I got a call today from a technician who is quite obviously still scratching his head trying to figure out why the gauge is behaving as it is, but they are taking care of me. A new gauge ships tomorrow. They also bent over backward (unsuccessfully) trying to sort out the UPS problem from their end. All in all, excellent customer support. I'm reserving judgement on the gauge until I have it for a little while.