Mod - "Extra" turn signal dashboard indicators
Some of you may remember a previous thread of mine, describing how I used a CAN Bus gateway device to intercept and recalculate the vehicle speed that's sent to the instrument cluster:
www.venuedrivers.com
Well, I still haven't put new wheels on (been waiting for summer weather), but I have played around a bit more with modifying the CAN Bus data.
OK, we all have the spot in the center of the dash that shows a big R when the car is in reverse.
For those with the CVT transmission, I believe it shows P for park, D for drive, etc.
But for those of us with manual transmissions, it shows an annoying indicator for when to upshift and which gear you're supposed to shift into. So you hit 10 mph or so and you get ⬆2 that means it's time to shift to second gear. I think it's supposedly for best gas mileage, although I'm skeptical. Anyways, I figured why not just eliminate it altogether? It was pretty easy to zero out those bytes in the CAN Bus data, and I've been driving around like that (without the shift indicator) for a few months now.
Then I had an idea a few weeks ago: Could I use that area in the display for something else? Through my testing, I found that you can only display an up arrow, a down arrow, and the numbers 1 through 8. Also, you had to have an arrow and a number or else nothing will display. Can't have just a arrow, or just a number.
I decided to use this area of the display as a secondary turn signal indicator.
Why? At the position I like to have my seat and steering wheel, the top of the steering wheel perfectly blocks the green turn signal arrows from my view. And I actually have found myself cruising along with my blinkers on because I didn't see them and forgot to turn them off.
It took some trial and error, but eventually I got the Can gateway to send a down arrow when the left turn signal is on, and an up arrow for the right.
I cycled the numbers through 1-8 just because I had to put something there and that was the best I could think of.
The end result:
How to calibrate the speedometer for a different...
Yes, it IS possible! In a different thread about wheel upgrades, I talked about whether or not it would be possible to change the overall diameter of the wheels & tires while maintaining a relatively accurate speedometer. To recap, my 2020 Venue SE comes with 185/65R15 (24.5 inch total...
www.venuedrivers.com
OK, we all have the spot in the center of the dash that shows a big R when the car is in reverse.
For those with the CVT transmission, I believe it shows P for park, D for drive, etc.
But for those of us with manual transmissions, it shows an annoying indicator for when to upshift and which gear you're supposed to shift into. So you hit 10 mph or so and you get ⬆2 that means it's time to shift to second gear. I think it's supposedly for best gas mileage, although I'm skeptical. Anyways, I figured why not just eliminate it altogether? It was pretty easy to zero out those bytes in the CAN Bus data, and I've been driving around like that (without the shift indicator) for a few months now.
Then I had an idea a few weeks ago: Could I use that area in the display for something else? Through my testing, I found that you can only display an up arrow, a down arrow, and the numbers 1 through 8. Also, you had to have an arrow and a number or else nothing will display. Can't have just a arrow, or just a number.
I decided to use this area of the display as a secondary turn signal indicator.
Why? At the position I like to have my seat and steering wheel, the top of the steering wheel perfectly blocks the green turn signal arrows from my view. And I actually have found myself cruising along with my blinkers on because I didn't see them and forgot to turn them off.
It took some trial and error, but eventually I got the Can gateway to send a down arrow when the left turn signal is on, and an up arrow for the right.
I cycled the numbers through 1-8 just because I had to put something there and that was the best I could think of.
The end result:
