Gauge Installs

This page will detail installing some of the super charger related gauges in a full tripple pod A pillar. The layout of this page will be a little ‘back and forth’ as I will install any senders or boost lines on the engine and run the wires and tubing through firewall first then prep the gauges and the pillar replacement for final installation of all the gauges at the same time. I have a page detailing the install and routing of the main boost gauge tubing as well as running vac/boost lines HERE for more specific info on the subject.

NOTE: Color coded wires are highly recommended. You will need black 12 or 14 gauge wire for sure as well as some red 14 guage wire. The FP sender wire could use BLUE, for instance, and/or green for an AF ratio gauge, so as to not cause confusion when you end up with a pillar full of wires.

For you rookies: ALWAYS USE BLACK for ground. It is the least you can do for yourself and whoever ends up buying your car when you move on to a Corvette. J

When you are done with installing the new A pillar gauge pod it should look something like this:

(Running lean? Nope. The key is just in the run position. It was too cold to open the garage door.)

Before we start you should already be familiar with running power off of the back of the interior fuse panel.

I got a triple pod A pillar from Summit Racing. It is a cover that goes over your stock A pillar. I cut holes for routing vac line and gauge wires in stock A pillar before mounting the pod pillar cover on the stock pillar trim.

First, remove stock pillar cover. Mate the triple pod pilar with the stock pilar and drill the mounting holes for the supplied plastic push pins using the suggested size drill bit. The push pins should be located in the four corners as well as two near the center of the pillar. Next, you will need to cut three holes in the stock pillar for routing wires and vac line. The boost gauge vac line needs a fairly large (long) hole as you do not want to create too sharp of a bend with the copper tubing. 1/8” nylon tubing came with the boost gauge. I was careful (or so I thought) and got two kinks right off the bat while routing the nylon line. I replaced this with 1/8” copper tubing. It was a boost gauge tubing kit from Autozone for $15 and came with some fittings and compression sleeves as well. It is a nice upgrade and highly recommended. Noticing that it was rather difficult to get the vac tubing routed down the dash (through the gap where A pillar meets the dash) as well as into the A pillar then through to the Pod that would hold the boost gauge all while working with the other assorted gauge wires I decided to make a second conection for the boost gauge after about 8” or so. This way I could put the Pod Pillar together with the gauges and wires and then connect the copper tubing together last before final mounting of the entire pillar(s) unit. This is hard to explain so here is a pic.

The boost gauge is in the middle. The white wire will be spliced into the back of the fuse panel on the LIGHTS dimmer. (when you turn on the head light switch the gauge will have back lighting…otherwise no backlite. You can also see the short section of copper tubing in this pic. It looks glossy because I have slipped some clear rubber 3/16” tubing over it as a sleeve to relieve stress while bending and reduce chance of kinking. I also pre bent that first section to fit through the pod. No kinks. Easy to remove if you have to take the pillar off to access gauges in the future as well. The end terminates in a female 1/8” collar with compression sleeve. It will mate to a male to male 1/8” adapter which will then mate to another 1/8” female collar and compression sleeve on the main copper vac/boost line. Teflon thread tape is used on all such connections.

Before I started confusing myself with all the sender wires vs. power wires, etc., I labled some of the more important and specific wires such as the A/F gauge O2 sensor wire, the F/P sender wire and the boost gauge back light power wire on both the gauge side and the main ‘routed’ supply wires. I also prepped the gauges and their specific main ‘feed’ wires with different colored quick connect spade crimp fittings. You can see in the above pic how the F/P gauge on the right has light blue crimp fittings and the A/F gauge on the left has light pink. These match the wires that have been run through firewall and dash to ‘supply’ the gauges. Basically, with three gauges as above you end up with a handful of wires. It makes final assembly a breeze and is also good if you need to access the gauge cluster at a later time. Just match the colors on the quick connect spade fittings and away you go. Oh yea, I used the slightly more expensive INSULATED fittings. (Once everything is connected I also wrap connections with electrical tape…the extra insulation is good insurance, however.) Now that the tripple pod A pillar has been prepped it is time to route some wires for all those gauges.

Depending on the year of your vehicle you may already have a hole on the drivers side firewall for the main wiring harness. I know my 2001 does not have a hole but rather a ‘plug.’ All modern F-bodies do have a pass through hole on the passenger side that exits under the PCM, though. Brent will show you to access it HERE.

I wanted the shortest connections possible for the A/F ratio gauge and less chance of kinking with the boost gauge tubing so I drilled a hole above the main wiring harness ‘plug’ in the driver side firewall. There is enough room under the dash with the knee panels removed to fit a drill up in there from inside the cab. The boost gauge came with a grommet as well. Before putting in the grommet I brushed primer on the now exposed metal and then also some white rustoleom and finaly some oil based white paint as well. The grommet was big enough to fit the copper boost line as well as the F/P sender wire and the A/F gauge O2 sensor wire.

Routing the sender/sensor wires and boost line:

With the A pillar off and the interior fuse panel removed and the battery disconnected as well as both of the drivers side knee panels removed you can feed your wires from the top of the dash (right there by the little side window defroster vent) down the dash. Route them neatly above the stock wireing harnes, brake pedal, etc.. Be careful not the kink the boost gauge tubing. Once down/through the dash it is easy cheesy to get them through the firewall.

Narrow band A/F ratio gauge:

This has three main wires…Ground, gauge power, and O2 sensor wire. The sensor wire splices into either of the exhaust manifold O2 sensors. (the ones before the CAT) Either manifold sensor works fine. My 2001 O2 sensors have 4 wires each. Two are light brown, one is dark brown and the other is purple. I used intuition and went for the purple wire. It was the right choice. Different years seem to have different amounts and colors of wire. The most popular I have seen on message board research is two wires…one of which is white…use the white wire in that case. I used a blue quick splice connector and made the connection as close to the sender as possible with 14 gauge wire.

Now that the A/F sensor wire was connected I trimmed down the other end up at the A pillar leaving a little slack. I also labled the wire and used a color coded insulated quick link crimp fitting.

Electric fuel pressure sender wire connection:

See also F/P sender install HERE. I have a two wire F/P sender from Nordsk. The ground wire went to a grounding strap bolt that was already on the drivers side fenderwell from the factory. The other wire was routed through the firewall, labled and color coded spade connectors were used as outlined above. The two wire F/P sender does not have to be grounded to the fitting it is mounted in. The ground wire is sufficient. I mention this because the TWO WIRE sender is newish from Nordsk and the intructions came with an addendum. It is okay and suggested to use teflon tape or other appropriate thread sealer when mounting the sender to the fuel line sender adapter. There was a scary moment when I first turned on the car with all the new gauges. Everything was fine except the F/P gauge was only displaying 00. It had power but was not giving a pressure reading. I went back and forth with reading the original sender instructions and the addendum and used a ‘hot wire rig’ (alligator clips between 3 feet of 12gauge wire) to ground the sender to the chassis. Nothing. I eventually noticed that I had used appx. 18 gauge wire to route through the firewall for the sender rather than 14 gauge. (The sender wire harness uses 14 gauge wire.) I replaced this with 14 gauge wire. (Good thing I had all those color coded spade connectors for the A pillar wire connections) I quickly got the pillar cluster back together and turned the key. 47 psi baby! That’s what I’m talking about!

Main gauge power connections:

Go HERE to see instructions for running power off of the back of the interior fuse panel. The page regards powering the above three gauges. Something else to note is that two of the gauges (A/F and F/P) require not only sender wire connections but also ACC power to run the gauge. I connected one 14 gauge red wire to the back of fuse panel and ran that up through the dash to the A pillar. I spliced that into two power wires for the two gauges. That connection is twisted and soldered and then triple wrapped with electrical tape. I also labled them as A/F-F/P Main Power and used color coded insulated spade style quick link crip fittings for connecting to appropriate gauges.

GROUND: I used a single section of 12 gauge black wire to run an interior ground for all three gauges. With the drivers side knee panel removed you can see a bolt up near the steering column bracket that on my 2001 was already used for a factory ground point. I just put eye hole crimp fitting on the end of the ground wire and mounted it there. The other end was routed up through the dash to the A pillar and sliced into three 14 gauge wire connections for grounding the gauges. That three way splice was soldered and wrapped similar to the main power wires as detailed above.

Now that all the gauges, power, sender, sensor, ground and vac lines have been routed and labled you can use the push pins to mount the tripple pod pillar cover on the stock A pillar and mount that bad boy. This part can be a bit of a hassle. The three gauges leave with a big mess of wires to fit up in there. I grouped wire bundles together with electrical tape to make things as neat as possible and then put the A pillar up and sorta wiggle an wire slack down into the dash area. The stock A pillar trim should be able to click in place. If you have to force things a little…that is okay…but if you have to start getting mean and ugly then maybe try adusting the wire clusters better. It will fit nice and neat.

I have no pics of the inside of A Pillar as they did not turn out. I could easily remove the pillar pod and take new pics, but you would just see a bunch of wires everywhere. I think you get the idea, though.