Let's talk about race dashes that optimize function while also being pleasing to the eye.

Here's a sampling of just Aim and Haltech dashes.





Lots of pretty colors, but IMHO, way, way too much information for me to take in at a glance. After reading the Haltech custom dash Facebook group for a while, I'm astounded by the number of "Race" dashes people are producing that contain crazy amounts of information, much of it completely unnecessary, IMHO.

Maybe I need to relax more in the cockpit, but even when I'm on a straight and taking a breath, I'm checking my mirrors, looking at the next corner, and maybe taking a split second or two to glance at the dash. I'm sure there's some usability study somewhere (or many) that says how many "things" can be processed in a glance, but I don't have that information in front of me.

My thinking is this: as a driver, I really don't need or want information overload. Here are some things I don't need:

• Speedometer: The speed sensor on my race car has been broken for about a year. I don't miss it because I simply don't use it. I pick up my speed cues from looking outside the car.
• Rev counter: I have lights on my dash that I have programmed for my rev limiter. I know if I'm out of the power band, so I don't care about low RPM. I use the dash lights to time my shifts.
• Numeric readouts: Reading a number, processing what it is, and making a decision based on that number is too much for my pea-sized brain. I don't care about 35 vs 37. I care if 35 is OK and 37 is bad, and I should make that decision before I get in the car.
• Full sweep gauges: Once on track, my temperatures are never going to be below the fully-warmed-up temperature. Why waste screen space on 0-95c when my car will only ever be running between 95c and 132c?
• Information I can't respond to: if I can't fix it from the cockpit, either by backing off, sending it harder, or flipping some backup switch, why show it to me?

I don't want to go through all the thinking I did, because that'd be boring to read and we all like pretty pictures more than anything else. So let's cut to the chase.

I decided I care about:

• Oil temperature
• Coolant temperature
• Transmission temperature
• Oil pressure
• Fuel level
• ABS malfunction
• Fuel pump malfunction
• Alternator malfunction
• ECU malfunction (aka CEL)

Let's hit the easy stuff first: "malfunction" means idiot light. Light is on if the reading is out of spec, otherwise it's off. I don't care if it's out-of-spec high or out-of-spec low, I just need to know it's broken. So I need four idiot lights.

The other five - I want to know where in the expected-on-track-range the reading is right now. This way I know if I need to back off or if I can send it harder. I also want something to grab my attention when I've sent it too hard and need to back off. Each of these sensors has an expected range that I can overthink from the comfort of my garage and that I can stick to on-track because the decision has already been made for me. I decided to use bar graphs for this - they're more compact than a sweeping needle and are very glance-able.

So five bar graphs plus four idiot lights. I ended up throwing in a gear indicator in this version, violating some of my truths, but sue me.




Left to right, top row - oil temperature, coolant temperature, oil pressure, transmission temperature, fuel level.
bottom row - ABS, Charging, Gear indicator, Fuel Pressure, CEL

No unit labels, no text labels. I used iconography to convey the meaning of each gauge, but I expect after a few sessions I'll simply have them memorized based on location. I honestly don't care about units - these could be in C or F, all I care about is the range. I could probably do away with the axis labels all together, but they may be useful as a "second glance" helper. Time will tell.

As you can see from the oil temperature gauge, the bar turns a different color when it enters a danger zone. I find the Haltech "Alarms" to be too intrusive for this task - they cover a good chunk of the dash and have text that needs to be read.

As for the aesthetics - questionable, probably. I gave Claude.ai a prompt to create a dashboard background and color scheme that reflect the world of the Blade Runner movie and it came up with this city skyline with colorful rain and buildings. Very atmospheric. It's arty, without being distracting. I also used it to create a boot screen within the same theme. I think that's pretty cool.






What are your thoughts? Am I wrong to distill a dash down to so few gauges? Is there value to reading discrete numbers off the screen? Should I go further and make it entirely idiot lights?

 

As a former ui/ux designer/developer i like this thread.

I can't stand digital gauges that emulate mechanical gauges. I like what you came up with

 

Thanks TBB, great thread, very timely for me, and good to see the board moving beyond the steam era.

My thoughts are driven by the fact that my car is a dual duty car, and apart from anything else it needs to have all the things that a road legal car has to have, and not to trigger the inspector who is doing the annual rego inspection. Being dual duty, that naturally points to a switchable layout. That might be a simple software or physical switch, worst case it would be two separate config files. As this is the race prep forum, and TBB has specifically nominated that as the subject of this thread - let's do it!

My take on the layout of the race dash is - TBB has nailed it. Basically, all the information the driver NEEDS, and nothing he/she doesn't NEED. Information conveyed with clarity and brevity. Information that can be assimilated in a fraction of a second scan/glance. My layout may differ from that shown, but not by much. Not a fan of just warning lights, though some big lights in red/orange/green might figure in mine. Definitely no revs dial/display, just the lights. My old racecar had a bright red trailer clearance light mounted in the driver's eyeline, I'd be interested in doing that again as a master alarm for critical functions - that comes on, hit the kill switch.

I'd add one item to the critical items - alternator charging. I am not worried about a flat battery, I am interested in a thrown belt disabling the water pump. Those of us with non-electric power steer might catch that pretty quickly but there is no ambiguity about the charge light.

That is about as far as I have gone down this rabbit hole at this time, I will be interested in others' takes.

 

Aha, yes, I forgot to mention that I'm using the IC-7's ability to switch between screens to do something more than just flip between AWESOME and OLD SKOOL decoration. I still have their off-the-shelf "Race" dash that I had configured for my car, as well as their all-the-numbers-in-tiny-fonts dash. The idea would be that I start the car on one of those to make sure everything looks sane, then switch to my custom dash in pre-grid.

Thanks for the compliment! I'm excited to see what I think of it after the first weekend.

The charge light is there in the bottom row, but it's not as big as it could be. The Haltech has an alarm function that can turn on certain LEDs that are used in the rev counter, and you can select the color. Right now I have an alarm for "fuel low" that comes on at some point and turns on yellow LEDs at the top of the dash. I think I also have one for coolant temp, which presents blue LEDs (blue = water). But then I have to remember what the colors mean or read the text in the alarm box...

I'd be interested to hear from the folks who have eons of experience racing. I've been doing this for a long time, but I'm still a n00b. Hoping they chime in!

 

I feel similarly about too much info isn’t always good, and when racing I don’t look at crap. I’ve configured the Link to do a fuel cut when parameters are out of whack and that makes me look down. But I continue going back and forth about whether I want a digital dash, or just a simple CAN Gauge with alarms. I’ve settled on the later for now because it’s less distracting, but a dash like yours would do me ok for track duty. May not be the case for many, but screens are a source of distraction for me, and in a dual duty car it also bugs my eyes in low light.

At any rate, I like your dash. It’s simple and to the point, although I would want a more boring background (less distraction). I personally do use the tach when racing as it gives me a gauge of how well I took a corner based on RPM at a certain point on track but that can also be done by feel or ear, or through shift lights or your timing system. It’s also probably not a thing for faster cars. I do find it satisfying to send the tach needle into the red though, and because of that it’s a requirement to have an analog tach.

 

Great discussion! A configurable dash is a great tool... lets you display exactly the info you want/need in a manner that works for you.

I use the AiM dash, which is configurable and has the option of multiple 'pages'. On track, I want just the basics. I do have volts/oil pressure/water temp in a numerical format so I can monitor specific numbers when going on and off track. I have warnings programmed for big flashy things if numbers go out of whack. I also have a bar tach in addition to the shift lights. I do have a gear indicator, which probably isn't necessary. What I really use most for TT/Time Attack is the lap info. I have last and best lap and over/under for current lap so I can see how I'm doing at any particular point.

This was the track page when I was first setting things up. It's changed a little, but basically still looks like this



For my street 'page', I add GPS speed and get rid of the lap time metrics. I also have an 'ECU' page which can come in handy... way too busy for driving, but a lot of info for tuning.

 

Real race dashes are pretty boring. I think Aim dashes are dated and boring, but I've been staring at them for over 10 years now, so I'm a bit jaded. They're a great intro dash. I've seen a few GT3/4 dashes and they're much simpler.

Take the Mercedes GT3 dash for instance (stolen off a iracing forum). RPM across the top, gear indicator is your major focus, ABS/TC/MAP settings for reference, and tire temps. These cars don't work until the tires work, so pressures are extremely important to look at during warm up. I'll be honest it's difficult to make drivers look at a lot of this data. The young pros certainly can, but by the time you've made enough money in life to race one of these, you're often too old to be able to look down, focus, and look back up at the speeds these cars are capable of. Without crashing of course.



My hot take, as Rota hinted at, is keep a simple screen for racing, more complicated screen for pits/street/diag. Racing should be 1-2 vitals you're concerned with for warmup/over driving, any changeable settings, gear, and whatever lap time reference/delta/predicted works best for you for driver improvement. RPM across the top and/or shift lights that can be seen out of your peripheral. That's it.

Here's my motec screen, little more complicated than I just told you it should be, but it works. Some drivers can look at it a lot, other's can't find a single number on this thing if you ask.

 

a fake gauge and gear number take up 3/4 of the screen...

 

Yeah not my fav screen but the most basic of the default options. Motec lets create your own, just haven't done it yet.

 

One thing is for certain, it 100% depends on the type of racing / driving you are doing. For a dual duty, or street car i love these dashes.

I've debated time and time again about putting a dash back in the boat. Fact of the matter is; I simply never look at it. Even when my vision isn't being blurred from how rough it is, I'm simply not looking down at gauges or a dash.
Oil pressure and water temp warning lights are the only thing i'll notice during competition. I have analog gauges for water temp and oil pressure i'll check during warm up laps.

 

Oh man, I had forgotten all about that one.

On my old Racepak setup, I had a page like that, specifically for warming up mainly, but useful for monitoring some of the vitals when things are less stressed. That will be a 'must' for me.

 

I just put together a dash layout for my dedicated track car. It's got a mix of information that I use on track and in the paddock.

I'm used to checking numbers on long straights, so I used a combination of bars and numbers. Things I'm checking on track are closer to the center. Any value that drops/rises out of range will light up red.
Haltech recently added CAN inputs for AIM-style timing so I'm sending that from a RaceCapture unit, feeding last lap, best lap and deltas.

RPM, fuel level, ethanol percentage and speed are mostly useful in the paddock.


A row of lights at the bottom for headlights, rain lights, traction control and ABS fault. I use alerts to for low coolant and oil temps so I can easily see from outside the car while it warms up. ABS failure and engine protection mode will alert to hopefully keep things safe in case either of those happen.



And a little coaching at start up.

 

I don't like digital dashes on a street or dual duty car, since the majority of the time you toss the factory cluster and lose your odometer. I also haven't found a cluster side connector for the NA/NB, so you're likely hacking the harness.
I have extensive experience with the Aim dashes MXS/MXG/MXP. In the amateur racer realm they are arguably the best data acq setup for analyzing laps/improving lap times. It's also ubiquitous, which makes sharing lap data simple. And the wifi setup works well to pull data to your laptop after a session. The main con to the Aim lineup is that they aren't infinitely customizable pages like the Haltech, Ecumaster, Motec ($$$$), McLaren($$$$$ lol), etc. You only have a finite list to choose from and the only customization possible is what channel you assign to each gauge location., Which if you're using it for a dual duty car you most likely care about the aesthetics. In the race car that's really not an issue and you want it simple.

 

Not sure what you are looking at, but that is not what I am seeing. In my case, I use the Solo for lap timing, so I don't need the dash to do that, bonus if it does. The dashes I am looking at do have odo/trip functionality, including IIRC MXG. AiM are short on aesthetic customisation it seems, but others not so much - though it may mean buying a customised face from a 3rd party vendor, NBD if you get something personalised just the way you want. While the race dash is (as we are discussing it) much simpler, the ability to place things that you want where you want is of value, just personalised against a different set of criteria.

 

As with most things in life, it's context-dependent. The first context you think of for race dashes is obviously sprint racing, and here's what I want on my race dash for that:

- shift lights
- warnings for oil/coolant/etc out of range
- that's about it

If I had a flappy paddle transmission I'd want a gear indicator as well. With a manual I think those are pretty useless.

For qualifying I want lap time data. Last lap time, best lap time, predicted lap time, +/- deltas, some combination of that stuff.

If you add endurance racing then numeric values for things like temperatures and pressures become useful if you don't have telemetry streaming back to a crew chief in the pits. Even if you do have that, it's still sometimes useful for when the telemetry isn't working, or is missing a value that turns out to be important.

But there are other contexts in which I use my race dash as well. I use it when I'm sitting on pre-grid, in which case I like to see live oil and coolant temperature so I know if the car is sufficiently warmed up. I use it in my pit stall for looking at fuel level and front/rear brake bias. I've got a field where it displays the "id" number for the current tune loaded on the ECU so I can easily check if I've got the right one to match the tires on the car. That can all live in a non-default page though.

I actually don't have a fuel gauge on the main view. For sprint racing I make sure there's enough in the car beforehand, and for endurance racing tracking that is the job of the crew chief back in the pits, not the driver. Telemetry helps a lot with that, but even without it you should be able to figure out the length of a stint pretty closely just in terms of number of laps using data from the test day. And if you set up the fuel system properly the driver will get a power cut out with at least a lap's worth of fuel remaining.

--Ian

 

No lap timing? Predictive, last lap?

I didn’t think I needed speed, but I now find it useful for corner speeds and making sure I am not driving too fast in the pits. Especially when reviewing data after a race.

I have my dash set up for lap times and speed. It has other info that lights up red when out of range, but I rely on large idiot lights for really important stuff.

I have been using RaceCapture for a while, it can integrate with what you have, or be your primary system.

 

I simply mean that the odometer on your aftermarket digital dash is not going to be valid to a government agency. You are removing the factory cluster and the government approved odometer, so you shouldn't be surprised to end up with a mileage discrepancy on the title if you end up selling it. Which is why I caution people to consider the ramifications of doing it to a street car.

 

The odo is ok here, as long as it is doing all the things that the standard dash does. It can be set to start at a number, and thereafter works as you would expect, driven by the speedo. In practical terms, the rego inspector (in a local mechanical workshop) will see an odo number, he will record it, job done. He will record that on the on-line rego file for the car, and probably look to see what last year's number was, out of curiosity and to ensure the number is greater than last year's.

Technically, it will not come from an ADR-approved device. It is possible that should the car have to 'go over the pits' after a defect notice the (government) inspector there would ping the device as an unapproved modification. However if it ticks all the boxes (required warning lights, odo, speedo, etc) it should hopefully get a pass (the car would be there for something other than a funny looking cluster) and so that is a risk I will have to run. I am more concerned about the BBK, which has not been signed off by a licensed engineer, but which my rego inspector is ok with, subject to it 'looking OK' when he inspects it on the hoist. The government inspector would CERTAINLY ping that!

There is an operation here that supplies data sourced from the rego authorities to people checking out used cars etc, but that is not going to show any inconsistency provided the real number has been entered on start-up. Unless and until the government is taxing road users on distance travelled, as an unapproved modification it is too low down in the dust and noise to become an issue. However, that may change when the fuel tax starts dropping as a result of people switching to electric cars, a RUC is already a topic in official conversations here ....

ETA On reflecting on your point, and my response, ISTM that plug in, plug out is the way to go. Either piggy back the new, or cut and use plugs.

 

RPM, oil pressure (with warning light), coolant (with warning light). If something seems off, I flip the switch and data log. My driving is bad enough without more distractions.

 

Why do you ever want data logging to be off?

--ian