Gauges are great, but what if they could be even better? What if you could get a gauge that is actually 300+ gauges in one (80+ from OBD-II)? What if it was smart, with warnings when something's going wrong? Overheating coolant? As long as you set it up correctly, you'll get a big, obvious warning when that happens. It will also warn you if your RPM is over a pre-set value - in other words, it has a built-in shift light. What if it could check and clear OBD-II codes and log up to 80 different OBD-II parameters (depending on your car), too? And top to it all off, what if it had the simplest possible installation - one easy plug?

Here's that gauge. From our friends at Banks - who do far more than just diesel performance, although they do that extremely well - is the iDash. This 2-1/16" / 52mm / "standard" size gauge plugs into your OBD-II port and pulls a ton of data from it. You can access everything, but you can also display it in an intelligent manner - choose the data you want to see (2-8 parameters at a time) and lay it out however you'd like. Then do it four more times, for a total of five screens with up to eight parameters each. So you can set up your "normal" parameters to watch, but you can also add more pages for special situations. Perhaps even more importantly, you can set warnings, so you get a big obvious warning so you'll notice when you're on track and a parameter breaches a pre-set limit. For Miatas, the iDash gives you access to 35 OBD-II parameters on an NC, 40 on an ND1, and 55 on an ND2. Refer to the "PID list" under the instructions link above. Note that this does work on all NCs, even though it may say elsewhere that it only works on 2009+ Miatas.

If you opt for the "DataMonster", you can log up to 100 parameters at a time (out of over 300), at an interval as fast as 0.1 seconds per entry (more parameters = slower logging). It includes a 16 GB Micro SD card, where it saves the file. You can watch the log play back on the gauge, use Banks' Data Log Viewer, or use your own software - it saves the log as a .csv file, which can be opened by any spreadsheet software (E.g. Excel or Sheets).

Don't need a log, but you do want to see what your min/max values were for a specific parameter? Also no problem, both the DataMonster and Supergauge allow you to set up to 20 values that will have their min/max values recorded.

So how do you know which one you need? Do you want to be able to log (record) the data? Then you need the DataMonster. If you want to see the data, but don't care about logging (recording) it, you need the SuperGauge. Both record min/max values of chosen parameters.

If you already have something plugged into your OBD-II, pick up an OBD-II splitter so you can leave your existing part plugged in and add this one. Bear in mind that the iDash will likely take priority over the data stream, so, e.g., it should work fine with an insurance monitor but it probably won't allow tuning while both the iDash and the tuner are plugged in.

Need more sensors? Banks sells a ton of different add-on sensors, nearly anything you could want. Check out that list here.

It's almost impossible to list everything that it can do, but you can see what Banks has to say about it here.

If you'd like to display your air:fuel ratio, be sure to choose (ironically) the fuel:air option when you choose the units you'd like to use. The Mazda ECUs (NC and ND) present their data differently than others, so the equation needs to be inverted to display the numbers you're expecting. This is very easy, thanks to the intuitive interface.

NC (2006-15) : Powertrain : Engine management

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