Racepak Display dash and G4X

[Fraser Simpson]

Hi there,

This one might be a bit oddball, but hoping someone knows the answer.     I have a mate who's building one of those project cars that takes forever (years) like most do.

He's got a Racepak IQ3 and one of the older Vipec/Link vNet serial interfaces.   Now of course time flies by and he's got a new Link G4X Fury and he's finally got the car running but when we went to get the dash working we're not getting any data.

Now I know those old interfaces will only work when you don't have the USB configuration cable connected etc etc so we're not making that mistake, but I'm wondering if the G4X Fury even supports the serial output needed anymore ?   It seems to support some kind of serial output, so we've set that speed to 57600 baud as it says in the old documentation, but it also says 'Requested - Short' as the connection mode but that's not an option we can see.   Also there's an option a second serial output which isn't showing in the documentation so yeah just confused as to what (if anything) the new ECU supports and how we might go about getting this going.

It's only a street car and he's not worried about the dash not going when it's getting tuned as once it's tuned it'll probably not get touched again and the new CANBUS interfaces are silly money really for what they are so he doesn't really want to spend the $ 800 or so just for an interface for some basic information from the ECU.

I'm kinda hoping that somehow you've got over the technical restrictions and we could have the dash and the ECU config cable connected together to make life easier if it's showing a second serial output somehow.......  I honestly don't care if not, just wondering what that's about.  the only options on serial 1 are Link serial and Honda integra dash and Honda integra immobiliser or something, then on serial 2 it's just Honda Integra options.

Any advice is always appreciated.

Fraser

[curly]

Looking on Holley's site: https://documents.holley.com/techlibrary_iq3s_manual.pdf

Pin 17 and 25 on the 34 pin connector are the CAN high/low pins respectively, his ECU should also have a CAN1 high/low. Whether or not the iQ3 has a CAN protocol for a G4X is another question.

[Adamw]

G4X doesnt currently have a serial dash broadcast.  I believe there is hardware present but there has been little (no) requests to support RS232 dash displays so there is no software/firmware to support it.  

You could buy something like a powertune dash for the same cost as a new Vnet module so probably better to consider something like that.  The cheapest option to make the racepak work would be the "USM", this gives you 4 hard wired inputs - ie, RPM, coolant etc. 

 

[Fraser Simpson]

Oh man that's a bummer........so why is there still provision for serial stuff under the configuration section for the ECU then ?  Is that just a hangover from the old model or something ?

So in short, it's not worth $ 800 + to get the CANBUS interface so probably the easiest route is to get rid of the G4X and go back to a G4+ Fury ?

Any other options you can think of ?

** Edit **

I was just looking on the Link website and the features section says it has serial RS232 communication....... am I mixing something up here ? or is the spec on the website wrong ?   https://dealers.linkecu.com/G4X-FuryX 

 

[Adamw]

1 hour ago, Fraser Simpson said:

so why is there still provision for serial stuff under the configuration section for the ECU then ?

The options are in the drop down.  The serial port/s currently can be used for coms to PC Link (instead of USB for radio telemetry etc) and for plug-in specific communications such as the Honda dash and imobaliser.  

 

[Fraser Simpson]

OK so there's no way you guys can help us get it enabled to support the Racepak serial interface for the IQ3 then as it is in the G4X ?

I assume you already have the code etc since it was working on the G4+ Fury ?

[Adamw]

2 hours ago, Fraser Simpson said:

I assume you already have the code etc since it was working on the G4+ Fury ?

The G4X firmware was a complete wipe the slate clean and start from scratch, it shares nothing with G4+.  Having said that I dont think it would be a particularly big or difficult job to add a compatible serial dash stream to the existing serial port options, but as always it is a matter of priorities and resources.  

The next few G4X features are already mapped out well in advance and and some have been in progress for quite some time, the firmware engineers are deep in G5 too.  I reckon it could be 6 months or more before anyone would be able to dedicate any resources to this feature.

[Fraser Simpson]

Disappointing, but totally understandable...... I'll have to let him know I guess he'll have to find another solution.

Thanks for the quick replies mate.