Because I bet you haven’t cleaned the inside of your tow rig window in a while.
You can also see the aftermarket gauges in the ’90s-appropriate A-pillar gauge pod. This article makes it look like I installed everything on the same day, but I actually did things over the course of several weeks.
Eventually I tore out all of the gauges and the A-pillar pod, and that was its own fun… because there was a horrible mess of wires under there.
But since I already own a race car named Dammit, I was pretty well on my way to immolation or impalement or something, so I clicked yes.
The CTS2 will ask you to choose a manufacturer and model and then will try to figure things out. It will also ask you for your VIN, which is fun to try to type on the touchscreen. Eventually it brings you to the gauges screen and you can start configuring things.
In the case of the van, engine oil temperature and transmission fluid temperature were both available for display. The van did not have a factory EGT, and, for whatever reason, both of the readings that seemed to look like they should show boost did not. One showed a fixed 14PSI and the other a fixed 28PSI. Perhaps my MAP sensor is bad, but I am not throwing any codes… so let’s see what we can do about that.
Edge Products makes it super easy to extend your CTS2 with additional modules. In my case I would be coupling the CTS2 with the EAS Competition Kit, which includes an EGT sensor (“pyrometer” or “pyro” for all you diesel/truck people), a 0-100PSI pressure sensor, and a standard resistive fluid temperature sensor. Pictured on the box is the proprietary expansion connector, which can be stacked for each additional module that you add.
4 comments
Oh man, Corky Bell; I have a copy of Maximum Boost sitting on my shelf, and it still comes in handy. He’s a fun writer!
Love how easy this is to integrate, and it looks to be super-legible and useful! I hope that you do a feature on pulling out the old wiring from the A-pillar gauges, I’ll bet that was a ton of fun, haha.
@Rick D. – oh man, it was a rat’s nest in there. Somehow I didn’t get a picture. I might still have the pile of crap that came out, and there’s _still_ a pile of crap in there.
I can’t find anything that edge makes that is compatible with the e-350!!!!!
The CTS2 (and I guess the newer 3) are not listed as compatible. The F250/350 and the Econolines have different ECUs and slightly different CAN PID setups. Some of the sensors that the trucks have (like the boost sensor) use a different CAN PID, so the CTS can’t find them. That’s why we had to plumb our own boost pressure sensor.
From our experience with the CTS2 and the ’98 E350, the oil and trans temperature work, are the two most important ones. There were no EGTs on these vehicles from the factory, so you were going to add one of those anyway. The kit covered in this article included the boost sensor, so that should be enough.
Edge claims that they do not have a tuner that works with the E350 for the same reason. That being said, we had a really, really old Edge tuner that came with the van. The tuner happily said it was tuning/programming the van, but it’s unclear if it actually did.
I hope this helps!