May 2025

Dash upgrade completed

It turned out to be a very trivial change to get the ECU to recognise the data sent from the Plex dashboard. It was as I thought, that it needed a full 8 bytes of B Frame data, otherwise the frame would be discarded. With the Plex configured to send four rotary switches, plus the two digital paddles, and two more fixed values to pad the frame out to 8 bytes, I simply had to reassign the ECU IO to the relevant B Frames and it worked! Both paddles are recognised, along with all four switches. I also changed the Plex to send 0 to 11 for the 12 positions provided by the rotary switches, rather than 1 to 12, and the ECU recognised all the switch positions.

I also unassigned the pair of analogue inputs on the SLAVE1 AN channels, which means I now have another pair of free analogue inputs available (via the X10 expander) which could be used elsewhere to monitor more of the engine health.









The printed bezel will be available in the Ebay shop, so if anyone else wants to use the same solution, I'm happy to manufacture and supply the parts.

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Connected the dash to the ECU

I had limited success connecting the Plex dash to the LifeRacing ECU. By that I mean, the dash displayed all the CAN data like I set it up to do. But the four rotary switches and the digital paddle switches were harder to setup. I'd asked Plex if the dash supported B frames, and it did. They provided the instructions how to send the LSB using a bitmask of 0x00FF. I set that up, but it wasnt receiving the data. To cut a long story short, the reason why was the ECU was discarding the B frames it was receiving, because I hadnt set the Plex dash to send 8 bytes. The ECU must see 8 bytes otherwise it discards the frame. Anyway, now I know that I've set the Plex up to send 8 bytes, and I'll try it again on Friday when I get back in to the garage again.



Because I've left the 9-way D-Type connector fitted on the CAN BUS, I can still plug the Dash4Pro display in at the same time as the Plex dash (which is connected using a Binder plug/socket) so that allowed me to display the frames being seen on the CAN bus. Very useful for debugging issues.

The BARC Midlands round at Snetterton in August has opened, and its another whopping £370 for the two days. Not quite as expensive as the Mallory Park round in June, but at least with Snetterton, you'll get more than two runs a day!

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Mk3 printed Plex dash bezel

The final version of the printed bezel was waiting for me when I got home on Thursday, so I didnt waste any time in taking the steering wheel apart and fitting the quick release boss and other parts to the new wheel. I think it looks great. I've just got a few wires to fit and it can be plugged in to the car for testing :D
Link to the Youtube short.



This is the schematic for the wiring that I need to produce to connect the four rotary switches, the joystick, and the paddles, to the Plex connector.

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Blyton success

I enjoyed myself sprinting at Blyton on Sunday, on the Eastern layout. Steve Miles and Martin Pickles (both BSC drivers) were both entered, but Martin had to withdraw and miss the event as he wasnt feeling well on Sunday morning. Get well soon Martin. Smileys ageing Van Diemen has had a lot of updates, some are working better than others. So he was my main (and only) competition, would he run the brand new Ultrasofts that he'd stashed in the trailer?

I had a new silencer fitted, which I was hoping would knock a couple of decibels off the sound level, so I wouldnt trip the sound meter. After I returned from my first timed run, I was warned the sound level had broken 98dB. So the previous event it was 95dB, and the addition of the silencer made the car twice as loud? OK, so I removed the silencer, and dropped the auto-gear shift rpm for 3rd gear to 6000rpm, to act as a short shift. Still on the cleaned Avons, I did the first timed run, full of trepidation. Had I tripped the sound meter? No, I was below 95dB this time. How does that work? Why would a silencer double to sound pressure? Anyway I spoke to Kev Theaker, and he said keep left off the start line, to put a couple more car widths between your car and the sound meter, which I did, and for the next four runs, I had no issues with noise.

Smiley was running on old Pirellis, and I opted for the 3 year old Pirellis for my T3 run, and on that run I recorded my quickest time of 56.65s. For all the other runs I was in the 57's, once the Pirellis had had their first use, their grip levels fell away, but at least I was consitently faster than Smiles. His best run (his sixth run which I elected not to do) he managed a 56.72, so I beat him by 0.07s, to take first in class and fastest overall.

No drama's today, I did reconnect the water sprayer and used iced water, which kept the air charge temperature below 50C, which wasn't bad considering the ambient temperatures were around 25C.

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Dashboard housing update

I've made a final push to get the dashboard housing completed, by mirroring the chamber I added on the side for the wires, so there is now a chamber on both sides of the housing.
This will give me more capacity for wires to run down to the front panel for the switches. I drilled the steering wheel at the weekend, for the Plex dash to attach to it, and the dash fits nicely inside the housing, against the aluminium wheel centre.

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Horn replaced

It was very easy to swap the faulty car horn on the beemer. Jack the car up, remove the wheel, remove the inner wheel arch lining, remove the faulty horn, and after fitting the new one, the process to put it all back together again took another 10 minutes. Cheaper than paying the BMW dealership to do it.

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New job

I started a new 12 month contract on Monday, so now I'm working Hybrid so I'm spending three days a week at my clients office in Manchester, and two days at home. Its been a busy first week, with an unexpected trip home on Tuesday afternoon to return again Wednesday morning, so the mileage is double that of a normal week, but its good to get back on the road again, and back in to an office environment.

I am now working as part of an Agile team, and getting to grips with daily SCRUMs and two week Sprints. Totally different mindset to the previous client I worked with.

I had the 335D serviced last week, in anticipation of the increased milage I'm going to be racking up. The last service was at the end of 2021, as the car had only travelled 14,000 miles in the past 3.5 years. So it was just a basic oil and filter change for £310. The dealer said one of the horns had stopped working, the car has a pair, a 400hz horn and a 500hz horn, and the 400hz one had gone silent (a common fault apparently on the 3 series). So I ordered a pair of new ones, made by Hella, from Autodoc, and they've arrived, ready for fitting this weekend.

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