Ford is looking to make their new Maverick compact truck stand out, and so far, it seems to be working. Not only is it exceptionally cheap for a brand-new hybrid, truck or otherwise, but Ford actively encourages owners to modify their new ride. From standardized mounting points throughout the cabin intended for 3D printed upgrades, to an auxiliary 12 VDC line run to the bed specifically for powering user supplied hardware.
But we doubt even the most imaginative of Blue Oval engineers could have predicted that somebody would rip out the whole dash module and replace it with one from a higher-end Ford this early in the game. While many people can’t even find one of these trucks on the lot, [Tyvemattis] on the Maverick Truck Club forum has detailed his efforts to replace the relatively uninspired stock dash module of his truck with an all-digital version pulled from a 2020 Ford Escape Titanium.
Now we say “effort”, but as it turns out, the swap went off nearly without a hitch. The new digital module not only appears to be the identical size and shape as the original, but they both use the same connectors. Presumably this is because both vehicles are based on Ford’s scalable C2 platform, and likely means more components from this family of vehicles such as the Lincoln Corsair or new Bronco could be installed into the Maverick.
So what’s the downside? According to [Tyvemattis], the computer is throwing error messages as the Maverick doesn’t have a lot of the hardware that the dash is trying to communicate with. He also can’t change the vehicle’s driving mode, and the cruise control can only be enabled when the truck is stopped. But probably the most annoying issue is that the fuel gauge is off by 50%, so when the tank is full, it shows you’ve only got half a tank. At least one other user on the forum believes this could be alleviated by modifying the fuel sensor wiring, so it will be interesting to see how difficult a fix it ends up being.
We first ran across the DIY-friendly Maverick back in October of last year, and we’re encouraged to already see owners answering Ford’s challenge by tinkering with the vehicle. Here’s hoping this is the start of a new chapter in the long and storied history of car hacking.
Thanks to [Matt] for the tip.
The real story here is that you might be able to remove a screen from your car and replace it with proper gauges.
Well, they are stepper motor driven.
But still better than using a screen to display analog inspired gauges as imagined by a game designer that switched careers.
If you are gonna slap in a screen as the dash, at least go full ham 80’s digital electronic dash with it, otherwise it’s just a exercise in effort.
coiled and pinched bargraphs, my beloved
A tachometer LED bar graph the shape of the engine torque curve is my favorite thing.
Followed by a VFD speedometer.
Ah, “proper” like this, you mean?
https://www.reddit.com/r/nixie/comments/smv9b5/nixie_tube_instrument_panel_in_my_corvair/
Indeed, a rare moment of hope, automotive UX wise….
How about little CRTs?
https://youtu.be/QP07Jq5b88M?t=216
Just add skins so people could try to recreate the dash of their most beloved car. For me that would be the dash of an 1st generation citroen cx
Most of those sound like coding issues which I presume may be easily resolved with the correct software / tool. I know when flicking through the coding options on my A4 just about every module had hundreds of options as to whether other modules were available and how they were wired (it seems everything is very statically defined, which I guess makes sense as these things don’t really get changed once they leave the line).
One thing I would worry about if they’re anything like the Germans is that the dash module often contains a duplicate copy of the odometer reading.
Make me think of the dash in the Perl-powered DeLorean: https://opensource.com/article/18/1/my-delorean-runs-perl
Love it.
I’m surprised I’m not the only one to do it, though he got farther as far as the cluster. I used Perl+SDL+V4L for my car PC. (Latter Clutter tool kit) The frontend look and feel was all HTML with attributes, non text was all done with animated gifs , attributes mapping frames to values to make it easily skinnable or predefined components. Had a space navigator/touchscreen for the main interface. So you could design a whole dash or other UI in Fireworks. Problems I had where it being ~2006, linux hardware was a PITA, and my bus speeds on my ODBII where too slow for real time. I started building out interfaces into the car with PICs for things that needed it (speedo, signals, etc), but then life happened and the dash component was never finished properly, but did have mp3 player and Sirius interface as well as cameras. A crappy vid of the mp3 player https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtqj2N8hc3Q
Although not directly related to the article…Does anyone know what the new dash graphics are written in and also the low level hardware (processor, etc) of the Dash. Just curious.
TIA
Ford did such a good job of making the truck stand out that they had to stop taking orders for it for the rest of 2022. Can’t keep up with demand. Sad because I want one…
Should have all 4 gauges. Having a gas gauge is not more important than oil pressure.
Sadly, the average drivers license holder can barely comprehend beyond the fact that when you pull the dipstick, there need to be some oil on it or somethings wrong.
So explaining the whole waffle about the importance of oil pressure to them is automotive technobabble.
The big surprise isn’t so much the standardized wiring harness, that seems like sanity in inventory management; but the fact that the replacement panel seems to be making a good faith(if somewhat confused) attempt to interact with the vehicle systems that are present; rather than just checking some sort of license key, determining that this VIN isn’t licensed for a premium option; and refusing to do anything further.
Why?