My Jamboree Build

Today I finished installing the transmission temperature gauge & sensor.

Here is the gauge I bought- a Glowshift Maxtow Digital/Analog Transmission Temperature Gauge





It came with the sensor, a cable to run between the sensor and the gauge, and a cable to run between the gauge & the truck wiring-



The sensor can be mounted in a few places but I chose to install the sensor in the test port in the side of my 4L80E transmission-



I stuck my cell phone up there to get a real world image & to find the plug to be removed-



After I removed the plug, I screwed the sensor into the transmission and ran it's cable into the truck & under the dash.

The gauge has 4 power wires to connect in the power harness-

1- Black - to ground
2- Red - to constant 12v
3 -Orange - to 12 volts connected to the headlights (for dimming)
4- White - to switched 12v (12v with the key ON)

I had no problems with the red, black & white wires- finding those sources was easy enough.

But the orange wire needed to be connected to 12v that is present when the headlights are ON in order to auto dim the gauge. I didn't feel like searching for that (and with daytime running lights, and 2 headlight circuits) I went another route.

I decided to add another switch to the panel that would allow me to select the 12v & manually dim the gauge.

I installed the push button ON/OFF switch into the lighting control panel. It popped out of the removed dash easily-



I flipped it over and drilled out a hole with a holesaw-



Then I drilled the specified sized hole into the panel, and inserted the switch (with the wires attached) into the panel-



After the switch was installed & the wires through, I sealed up the hole with a small circle of plastic glued in place.

Now the switch will apply/remove 12v to the orange wire & enable a manual dimming mode. Once in the dim mode, you can hold the button on the gauge and then select 3 brightness level lower than the bright daytime setting.

I mounted the gauge in an Autometer single steel pod like this-



I mounted it on the top of the dashboard right at the left pillar. I'll post up a day time pic of it tomorrow.

After I buttoned it all up, I took it out for a 20 min drive to see what I could see. I found that the max temp to be 150F, and the outside air temp was about 40F.

The lowest brightness setting is still a too high for my taste, so I'm calling Glowshift tomorrow to see if they have any stick on plastic filters to tone it down some.

Here's a pic I took with the brightness all the way down-



Tomorrow I will be taking it into the mountains to push it hard & see how the trans cooling system works.