Rover Gauge?

[PeteGriff]

After reading the Blitzracing website (fascinating stuff), I am intrigued and interested in this Rover Gauge software for use on a laptop etc. Has anyone here used it and can throw some light on how useful it may be? Rgds, Pete

[V8 GRF]

Thread here http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=113...

Has a link to quite a lengthy thread.

[cavebloke]

I've used the Roverguage software on my pre-cat and it's pretty good to use as a diagnostic just to see that the various sensors are responding in real time to inputs and giving the right responses. You can do the same checking with a multimeter but it's much more of a faff.
I haven't solved a problem with it yet since everything seems to be fine but it's quite fun to tinker with and I can see it being useful in the future. Possibly it's more useful if you have a 500 because then you can check what influence the lambda sensors are exerting on the mapping.
I bought a cable from blitzracing so I can plug the car into my laptop directly through the USB and it's all very simple to use.

[PeteGriff]

Cheers guys, very helpful, rgds, Pete

[Oldred_V8S]

Excellent bit of kit. I used it to help resolve a fuel pump issues I leave the lead permanently plugged into the diag port and coiled up in the glove box.

[davep]

Oldred_V8S said:

Excellent bit of kit. I used it to help resolve a fuel pump issues I leave the lead permanently plugged into the diag port and coiled up in the glove box.

FWIW with your USB lead disconnected the diag port (TestBook connector) should have the shorting plug reconnected so as to prevent spurious electrical noise being seen by the ECU as unwanted commands or data. That's the theory, it'd be interesting to see if your ECU works OK with your cable coiled in the glovebox setup.

[Pink_Floyd]

davep said:

should have the shorting plug reconnected so as to prevent spurious electrical noise

Don't have one on my connector.

[Oldred_V8S]

Pink_Floyd said:

davep said:

should have the shorting plug reconnected so as to prevent spurious electrical noise

Don't have one on my connector.

That was a concern to me too so I contacted Mark at Blitzracing; he assured me that all should be fine, which it appears to be. I had intended extending the ECU loom into the glove box to make access easier (and of course continue to use the shorting plug), but Mark said don't bother.

[davep]

Oldred_V8S said:

That was a concern to me too so I contacted Mark at Blitzracing; he assured me that all should be fine, which it appears to be. I had intended extending the ECU loom into the glove box to make access easier (and of course continue to use the shorting plug), but Mark said don't bother.

That's good to know, Mark really knows his stuff.

However, I'm not absolutely sure but I think one of the pins on the TestBook socket is part of the power feed circuit for the main injector relay (Brown/Orange), so with the plug removed that could be a candidate for a short, pretty remote but a possibility all the same.

[blitzracing]

You are quite safe, there are only 3 pins, earth, transmit and recieve on the OBD socket. I think the extra plug just grounds the receive pin to stop electrical noise making the recieve signal go logic 1, but it seems to be missing on a large number of looms without bad effect. Being relalistic, to have electrical noise make an effect without the loop plug it would have be significant voltage to make the input logic see the signal as a "1", and then be be picked up by the ECU as some sort of understandable control signal to make the ECU do anything, which is probibibly about the same chance as winning the lottery. Anyway leaving the RoverGauge cable in all the time stops the signals floating anyway if the loopback plug is missing as it provides a high resistance path to ground in its internal circuitry.

The connector with the 5 volts is the one for just the error code display, not the OBD one.

[davep]

Thanks for clearing that up Blitz.