I thought I had a video from before with the needle glitching out like crazy but I couldn't find it. Either way positive boost at idle and 25+ at WOT isn't normal for a stock car.
After leaving the gauge unplugged for months (until February) I finally decided to do something about it, so I shot an email to Winston@Podi and he helped me diagnose and troubleshoot a faulty sender. I want to take a moment to thank Winston and give him a shoutout for his super quick responses (less than an hour from my first email) and his amazing help. Without his tips and questions I wouldn't have thought to open the sender and his help narrowing down the diagnosis was great! 2 thumbs up for Podi's customer service. Not to mention I bought the gauge in 2012, so I was long outside of any warranty. Nice to see he stands by his products and his customers.
Anyway, after cracking it open I found signs of oxidation via water intrusion in the electronic sender.
Winston explained that it was very common on the FSI engines since their PCV systems tend to push more moisture around in the intake system. I ordered a new sender from him and got a pack of new filters, which he recommended. I got the replacement in the mail the next day (the benefits of living 2 hours south of the border with Vancouver BC where they're located) and installed it and spliced in a second filter into the vacuum line. Voila, working boost gauge. I was a happy camper.
Part 2: Fast forward to a month later and the EXACT SAME THING starts happening again. Yup, water in the sender. I let it dry out and connect it up and its working fine again, but within a few days its back to its old tricks. As I'm trying to figure out how so much water is getting in there it occurs to me that it could be an issue with my plumbing. See I ran the vacuum line around the firewall (under the hood gasket by the ECU) thinking that the reduction in heat back there would be better for the longevity of the sender. Sure it reduced the heat that the sender saw, but it also introduced the issue with temperature differentials. To simplify, hot moist (moist...heh, heh) air will condense when it encounters a cooler surface. Its why your windows fog up when its cold outside. This was happening INSIDE my vacuum lines, the hot moist air would propagate up the line and then it would hit the sender surface and condense, coating the sender with a layer of moisture and causing the sender to glitch out and eventually oxidize itself into oblivion.
My solution was to move the sender back to the engine side of the firewall. I have it ziptied right near the coolant bottle I believe. Either way its now been a month of running like this without any issues so I'm considering the case closed.
TL;DR? 1) Use two filters between the manifold source and the electronic sender a la Winston's instructions. 2) make sure the sender and lines remain a similar temperature to the incoming air and the surrounding engine bay, aka locate it within the hot part of the engine bay.
Figured I would pass this stuff along because I wanted to give Winston a shout out for his stellar customer service and pass along this info that I learned in case it helps someone else out who might encounter the same issues. Winston isn't wrong about the FSI issues with moisture btw, I ran this gauge routed EXACTLY THE SAME WAY for over 3 years in my 1.8t b6 without a single hiccup. And it only took a few months to get ruined with this routing, even with multiple filters.
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Originally Posted by oVeRdOsE
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