Ultra Gauge Question

coop74

Well-known member
Dec 10, 2015
287
7
Alcoa TN
Ok, when you guys are setting up your utlra Gauge, what are you using for the value of the full tank of fuel? Do you make the adjustments to miles and gallons used to increase your accuracy?

thanks in advance for your replies.
 

kade

Well-known member
Oct 15, 2013
235
7
Upstate, SC
Man, I hate to add to this but I have a question about ug too. This is plug and play right? Just plug into obd2 and mount, Right? It give coolant/engine temp without having to fit any sensors?
 

coop74

Well-known member
Dec 10, 2015
287
7
Alcoa TN
Man, I hate to add to this but I have a question about ug too. This is plug and play right? Just plug into obd2 and mount, Right? It give coolant/engine temp without having to fit any sensors?
it will output to the screen almost everything your machine has a sensor for. you will need to configure screens but it is pretty easy...
 

Rocky

Well-known member
Apr 23, 2004
2,178
7
Red Sox Nation
I have one which perhaps because I moved it from vehicle to vehicle hasn't worked in months. I'm going to have to work on this.
 

JUKE179r

Well-known member
Sep 14, 2016
761
95
Suffolkshire, UK
Man, I hate to add to this but I have a question about ug too. This is plug and play right? Just plug into obd2 and mount, Right? It give coolant/engine temp without having to fit any sensors?
Yes... just plug and play with ODBII port.
Yes... it does show coolant/engine temps without adding sensors.


I don't have the regular UltraGauge but I do have the UltraGauge Blue that I use on my iPhone and iPad to monitor various personalized gauges/meters/graphs.
 

Swedjen2

Well-known member
Sep 12, 2018
594
127
California
"Followed instructions, sitting on side of road. Its cold, plz send help."

That's what AAA is for, because in the words of Juaquin Andujar, "You never know". (you can look it up)
 

MNinWI

Well-known member
Dec 19, 2007
83
2
I have had the Ultra Gauge for several years, can't remember when I bought it. But I think I was one of the first ones that used it on a 2003 D2, as it had some problems and the company wrote a modification to the firmware to make it work properly.

Yeah, plug it in, wait a few minutes for it to figure out what sensors are there, etc. You can change which statistics you want to display.

I do not recall what I set for tank size, but I think I used the capacity in the manual. That said, I use the gauge on the dash to tell me when to go fill up the tank, not the UltraGauge readout.

I calibrated the fuel usage and the distance. But, I found that city driving with lots of cold starts results in a lot of error for fuel usage, especially in winter. That could give you a very overly optimistic estimate for distance you can travel on your remaining fuel.

I do not know how it calculates fuel usage, but I suspect (could be wrong) that it reads an air flow into the engine senor and then uses a generic stoichiometric value for air to fuel ratio to estimate fuel usage. That is great if your engine is always warmed up and everything else is at peak efficiency. But that will give large errors to fuel usage when the engine is cold, so lots of short distance engine starts would result in more error. I am retired, rarely drive more than 5 miles in winter when driving around town. Thus, I get a lot of error for fuel usage for city driving. But when I drive long distances on the highway where most of the time the engine is warmed up, it gives me pretty consistent fuel usage values.

But I think they used a stoichiometric value for 100 percent gasoline, not the 10 percent ethanol mix which reduces your fuel mileage, calibrating the fuel usage can correct for that.

I think it is quite useful. When one of my oxygen sensors was going bad, there were enough sensor readouts for me to figure out which sensor, etc.
 

Longtallsally

Well-known member
Nov 28, 2016
76
1
UT
If a D2 I went by the RAVE and did 25.5 gal when I set the tank size (look in the UG manual on how to set). They say to get it right, FIRST do the distance calibration (again in the manual), then do the tank level calibration.

The simple deal is, fill the tank, reset the trip computer, then fill again and go in and put the correct number of gallons and it should get better. Here’s my rub, you can only adjust so much and I’ve never gotten that part correct. I just filled up after doing the distance calibration and hope to get the tank level correct this week when I fill up again.
 

coop74

Well-known member
Dec 10, 2015
287
7
Alcoa TN
The initial tank setting is not related to the calibration. The calibration is pretty easy unless you do a bone head move and reset to factory...

I am thinking i will use 23.5 gallons as i have never been able to get more then about 22.5 in mine.
 

Blue

Well-known member
Mar 26, 2004
10,043
856
AZ
I do the math in my head. Pretty easy since it's always between 11-12 mpg.

Don't rely on the ultra-gauges for fuel consumption/fuel remaining. Just use it to monitor coolant temp like everyone else.