Day 18: Adding Auto Meter Gauges & FAST Wideband

We are nearing the end of Project Grandma, a project we so dearly love. In preparation for the arrival from Bob Lapp from Spagetti Menders, we spent some time getting all of the electronics mounted in the car – goodies like the Auto Meter tach and gauges, plus a FAST Dual Wide Band Air/Fuel Sensor. Here’s a quick update.

Auto Meter Gauges

We decided to use Auto Meter’s Ultra-Lite Ultimate Series Gauges along with an Auto Meter Dual Channel playback tach. We chose these trick full-sweep electric gauges because they make plumbing a snap, and are super accurate. In fact, they are controlled by a digital microprocessor that uses stepper motor drives alongside what Auto Meter calls laboratory grade sending units.

We selected two (2) fuel pressure gauges, one that was 0-15 psi for the nitrous fuel pump, and another that was 0-100 psi for the EFI pump. We also picked oil pressure, and water temperature– all in 2 5/8-inch sizes.

Gone are the days where electric gauges can’t be used in race cars. Here’s what Auto Meter says about the Full Sweep technology:

  • Powered by digital microprocessor-controlled, rugged stepper motor drives & laboratory grade sending units
  • They combine Extreme Durability & Readability of 270 degree sweep mechanical gauges w/ the Easy Installation & Safe Operation of short sweep electrics.
  • Track Tested & Race Proven, these units use precision senders to keep hazardous fluids out of the driver compartment, and perform gauge calibration and sensor diagnostics at power up for Extreme Accuracy, every time.

One thing we thought was SUPER trick was the warning and peak indicators for the fuel pressure gauges. Now you’ll get notified if you lose fuel pressure! Try that with your mechanical gauges!

Check out our Ultimate II Playback tach. This is what Auto Meter refers to as a “Dual Channel” Playback tach because it can record both engine and driveshaft RPM for playback, either on the face of the gauge or on your laptop. Also, it features a 4-stage shift light (mini) so you can have different shift points for each gear.

One change we made (see below) is adding the Auto Meter LED 12-light Shift Light. I guess we wanted to be like the Pro Stock guys, or something.

Here’s some of the info on our Auto Meter #6884 Dual Channel:

  • Recording engine and driveshaft RPM enables us to analyze torque converter performance, shift points, and converter slip. Pause playback on the LED to directly compare engine, driveshaft, and engine-to-drive ratio.
  • A clear 100 samples per second provide .01 second accuracy on the LED during playback
  • The recording settings are Pre-Race/Burnout with Intelligence, Unlimited Pre-Race, and 20-Second Burnout and Run. Triggered by an adjustable RPM threshold, burnout recordings stop when RPM go below the threshold.
  • We can Download data to a laptop or PC, or view each pass in real time on the tachometer.
  • Tach Facts software allows for an in-depth engine, driveshaft, or engine-to-drive ratio analysis, if we decide to fire up the old Laptop and download our runs.

Initially we didn’t have time to setup the driveshaft RPM monitoring for the first passes at the track, but it’s on our short list to take advantage of this very powerful tach!

Mounting the tach was easy. We used the optional Auto Meter 1-5/8-inch roll cage mounting bracket, and mounted our Auto Meter LED shift light right in the driver’s vision. You can also use the supplied mount to bolt it to the dash board, but we liked to put the tach up in the corner of the roll cage where it doesn’t block our vision.

We’ll leave the wiring of the gauges to our next story, but rest assured, it’s pretty simple stuff. Now, let’s move on to our FAST Wide Band Dual Air/Fuel Ratio gauge.

FAST Dual Wide Band Air/Fuel Gauge

With plenty of gauges watching what’s going in and going on in our engine, we needed a way to see what was coming out. These days, wide band O2 sensors are a tuning necessary. In Grandma, we would use a FAST Dual Wide Band Air/Fuel Ratio meter from the guys at FUEL AIR SPARK.

You’ll likely remember we did a complete video and tech article on the Dual Wide Band meter. We even did a video, embedded below:

For guys that are serious about tuning, the dual channel system is a must. This lets you monitor air/fuel in each side of the exhaust individually, or you can view it as an average between the two. Don’t worry, if money is a little tight you can always get the single channel now, and upgrade it to the dual later.

Here are the highlights of the FAST Wide Band, and how we are going to tune our Malibu’s 555ci big block with it.

  • Built-In Data Logging: The FAST Wide Band has built-in data logging with the press of a button, and you can even set it to trigger based on RPM. After our burnout, we’ll hit the button, and be ready to rock.
  • Dual or Average Sensor Reading: We like the Dual 02 Sensor feature for a number of reasons. It allows us to see if both sensors are functioning and allows to monitor each bank of cylinders for a clogged injector.
  • RPM Logging: A standard but usual feature. We can log air/fuel over time and RPM during an entire drag strip run, helping us adjust pockets within our RPM curve.

Another trick thing about the FAST is that it includes an Analog output wire, so that you can feed the Wide Band 02 sensor output from the FAST into your EFI box. We used this to feed our Edelbrock EFI box, so we didn’t have to duplicate wide band 02 sensors.


We welded our Lemon’s headers with an O2 Wide band bung per side, and it was easy as pie. Make sure to install your Bosch wide band sensors either level, or above.

Our G-Body Dash: A Trick Work of Mike Ryan Art

One of the most important things with a race car is making it easy to work on. Sure, it’s “supposed” to be a street car. But the truth is, you’ll need to get up, under, and behind the dash for wiring, for maintenance, and for access to all kinds of things. We wanted to make our dash “stock” yet removable. Above, is the finished project. A completely removable “dash” for a G-Body where the gauges and electrical items don’t have to move at all. In a future blog, we’ll show you exactly how we did it, but the basics are this:

We found and located a stock G-Body Dash Cover, and built mounting brackets using DZUS fasteners. We installed about 8 brackets so that we could DZUS the dashboard in and out. Then we built a carbon fiber plate and aluminum plate that would also mount to those same brackets. The idea was that the carbon plate would mount the gauges and the FAST wide band, while allowing the dash cover to be removed. However, we could still un-DZUS the plate to do gauge maintenance and rewiring.

Here’s our rough mockup of the Dash and Carbon Plate.


Next up was covering the plate with tape and making some mock ups for positioning:

Quick work with a whole saw after we laid out all of the gauges and we were well on our way to getting the gauges in:

You can see using the Auto Meter supplied hardware, just how easy it was to install and mount the gauges:

We’ll show you the rest of our tricks in our next blog!

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