Preview.. oil, water temp? Oil pressure, system voltage? Coming right up...

This is a preview of a product a member of our forum family has been working on, with some assistance from myself and one or two other beta testers. It's something vital for the track junkie.. and just plain cool for the rest of us. It will be available for the 987.2 and 997.2 models, and perhaps for the .1 models of each (it may require .1 owners to replace one sensor in the engine.) Meanwhile, today's reveal: That's not all it does..

When you don't have the useless sport-chrono pod.. there are several alternatives..

From the driver's viewpoint... More to come..

I installed the first release grade version today.. It has a number of neat features (one or two I suggested - go Boxsters!) and I'll be enlightening people on them shortly after I get some photos edited.

Following! So cool.

So - my input into this project - a few things on the interface (I lobbied successfully for a voltmeter function) - and I believe I suggested this location. Chris was thinking about using the regular AC vent on that side of the dash as a mount point, until I pointed out the vent on the top of the dash, basically useless vent, and a fixed vent pattern that he could design a mount made to fit it (we tried out different angles.) I think we got it right. This configuration will also come with a simple round adhesive mount - meant to use on the interior of the windshield, not possible in NJ since that's where our inspection stickers are. Chris is also offering a mount for the top of the steering column. That wouldn't work for me - I'm short - and it partly blocked the center LCD dash display. Taller people might find that to be just the thing.. here's a photo of it on Chris' 997: It's certainly interesting being able to monitor real-time/real-value data for water temperature (the one on the dash is wildly inaccurate above about 160F), oil temperature (something we don't have on a 987), and oil pressure. Plus my voltmeter readout (sometimes I just need reassurance..) Chris has written an excellent owners/installation manual for the unit (I helped a bit with proofreading) and it's about a 3 on a scale of 1-10 of difficulty of installation (inserting a key into the ignition is a 1, rebuilding a PDK is a 10). More about it can be found on Chris's website: About — 997research - look under shopping... the beta version of the manual is also there. There is more in a thread here on Planet-9 about getting an oil-pressure readout on the 987.1 series cars: https://www.planet-9.com/threads/oil-pressure-sensor-and-data-on-can-bus.254248/ Total reveal - I'm not in any way profiting from this effort - nor at the moment is Planet-9. I thought this was a way cool sort of thing when Chris first made one to replace the useless Sport-Chrono clock. I didn't have the Sport-Chrono, so I didn't have the lump, which led me to talk to Chris about alternative mounting. This is the result. For anyone considering tracking their 987 (or 997), this is as vital as good tires (perhaps more since it can warn you of impending engine damage in time to avoid it). For the rest of us - it's just very cool, and I'm old enough to remember when cars had all these gauges (1963 Volvo P1800) and they were considered useful, so they weren't "buffered" like the ones now are. I'll be retitling this thread shortly.. but the link to it will remain the same if you want to share it.. and I'll also be posting a few more photos of the different functions available on it.. plus where I mounted my "mode button"

Wow Chris and Don. This is fantastic!!! I'm one of the early adopters of this gauge and find it invaluable. I was lucky enough to have a sport chrono for my 987.2 and wondered about optional mounting options for others since not every 987.2 had sport chrono . In addition to finding the actual numbers extremely useful when at the track or driving hard, I also think that this gauge can help us with engine reliability. The oil temp is the most crucial indicator of when a car is warmed up properly, and we don't have that on the 9x7 platform so we have to guess when the car is ready to be flogged hard. We usually do this by the amount of time driven, number of miles driven and the coolant temp. But using this information still requires guessing. And the ambient temperature variations on any particular day make guessing very difficult. After all, how many extra miles or time do you have to add to your guess to accommodate 10 degrees less in ambient temp? We simply don't know. So having this real gauge allows one to make sure the car is properly warmed up before driving hard. Let us know when it's available with the optional mounting options as well as when it might be available for the 9x7.1 platform. I recommended it to others and at least one has gotten it, but the 9x7.1 model is far more prolific.

Awaiting the .1 solution as it is even more critical to monitor oil pressure for the M96/7 compared to the 9A1 drivetrain. My buddy @DinkyHatchback has been working on an Arduino powered homebrew solution implemented in his car but I don't think he has any plans to produce it for sale and public use outside of friends. If the original creator (sorry, I forgot your username but I followed your development thread) plans to make a .1 version please PM me as I would be happy to be a beta tester as I can provide both track and day-to-day "grandma car" usage since my car is dual-duty.

OK.. a few more pictures. I think I mentioned the mode-button before. I guess I should explain what it's used for: It's used for initial configuration - it can be used to rotate the display screen in 90 degree intervals. That's helpful if where you're mounting the screen requires a different position for the wire that powers up the display. It's also used to switch between display modes: oil/water temps, oil/water temps with bargraphs, oil temp/oil pressure with bargraphs. If you're installing the unit on a car that has PASM - you don't need the mode select switch. Double-presses of the PASM button will perform the same change of function that a single press of the mode-select button would. I don't have PASM so I needed to install the mode-select button. In the installation/instruction manual there are several clever suggestions, but since I'm basically lazy, I decided to mount it in the carpeted panel in the footwell. Easy to do since you remove this panel during the installationl. It's simple, discrete, and quite accessible. It doesn't have to be looked at to operate it. So - Inside Outside Done., Discrete and falls readily to hand.

I promised some more views on what it displays: Optional Voltmeter Display (combined with oil/water temps): Dash gauge (engine just stopped): What actually was happening: FWIW - I observed the water temperature get to 209F while the dash gauge happily sat at 175F. 209F doesn't worry me since most modern engines run that warm for fuel efficiency - plus I owned an XKE when I was much younger - and that regularly sat at 212F... usually - until stop and go traffic on a hot summer day showed the inadequacy of the Lucas (King of Darkness) single (1/2 wide) blade cooling fan. The fix was to turn the heat on max and that usually kept it from blowing up (I did have 1 head-gasket failure though..)

I have to agree - it would really be a valuable addition to the earlier 987.1 series cars since under track conditions they've been known to lose oil pressure. The issue with the 987.1 cars is - they don't have the needed oil pressure sensor. It's not there. What is there is a connector that apparently would support it (one from the 996 911 series), and I'm not clear if the pins in the connector are there or if the wiring is there. Those things might have to be added to enable it. From talking with Christopher - I believe there may be a beta tester who is supposed to take up that challenge, but I'm not in the loop on that.

Very nice. And love the voltmeter. Nice addition.

Another view from the driver's seat (phone up to my nose):

Wow! Great feedback and many thanks to @deilenberger for posting this. For all the 987.1 owners (who would like to see oil pressure), please have a look at the last page of the installation/operation manual on my site. Here's a direct link . On this page I summarize all the knowledge I collected on P9 from people who did research into this matter. So in theory it should be pretty straight forward. As Don said, there are now 2 people who said that they would try if it worked, but it looks like neither has gotten to it yet. Quite honestly I am 90% sure that what is described on the last page of the manual will work, all I need is a 987.1 owner who is willing to give it a try in the very near future.

This was just posted on the Track Caymans FB group and I figured it would be relevant to the thread. Someone went ahead and decoded the CANBUS for 9X6 and 9X7 cars. You can read the post in its entirety here: Here's a direct link to his GitHub repository. GitHub - Goingnowherefast/Porsche-987.1-997.1-986-996-CANBUS: Here you will find an updated repository of the combined .DBC's for many Porsches including the 997.1, 987.1, 986, and 996 DBW cars. Here you will find an updated repository of the combined .DBC's for many Porsches including the 997.1, 987.1, 986, and 996 DBW cars. - Goingnowherefast/Porsche-987.1-997.1-986-996-CANBUS github.com Hope this is helpful for the budding home engineers.

Downloaded and saved the data. If I ever have time to look at this more closely, that will be helpful, I'm sure! Thanks for posting this!

Aaaaaaand, the "standalone gauge" is now available.

Hi all, What is the easiest way to do this? I see that a cobb accessport can also read oil temp / pressure, I have a PIWIS but I would just need the temp / pressure on my phone screen. Thanks!

Just an FYI that the Cobb device is estimating the oil temp. The coolant temp is a direct reading while the oil temp is not.

Have you looked at Torque? Android app - will run on an Android phone. I haven't checked oil/water temp capabilities, but since it's on the CANbus chances are it can display them. I looked and it does list "Engine Oil Temperature" as a display option, so possibly this might be your best bet for minimal $$.

Raising this very old thread with exciting news for 987.1 owners. Quick summary: You have SportChrono and don't know what to do with the stupid clock, but would also like to see oil pressure and oil temp - I got the solution for you! You don't have SportChrono but still would like the functionality of the product above - I got the solution for you. The one BIG open question was that: On the 987.1 oil pressure is not available in the ECU, but there were rumors that you could "hack" it to get this to work. Well, I waited a loooooooong time for a volunteer with a 987.1 to try it, and finally someone tried it and IT WORKS! Here is a link to a YouTube video which was made by Nicholas (the volunteer) that shows what needs to be done, fast forward to 8:19 in the video. If you rather like to read what needs to be done, here's a link to the instructions .

and for anyone on the fence: Use code "PLANET9" at checkout for 5% off for P9 members