One thing I’ve really disliked about the bugeye WRX was the decision to have the rev counter over to the right hand side of the dashboard and the speedo in the center. Sure that may seem like a sensible way of doing thing but if it’s intended to be a drivers car the rev counter is far more the priority for driving!

Subaru did put the rev counter in the middle on the bug STi and continued this layout on the blobeye’s and Hawkeyes.. Also the newer models has much sharper dials with the lettering and red needles.. I tried in the past to replicate this using red LED’s which worked. But was never quite right and still didn’t have my rev counter in the middle.

Couple years ago I sourced a blob STi dash off ebay but soon realised the obvious mistake.. The milage is stored on the dash rather than ECU.. So STi dash read 34k when the car had done much more. I admit I’ve done some dodgy things in the past but I drew the line at that one.. I read up on it and discovered the milage is stored on a chip soldered to the circuit board in the dash and to update it meant desoldering the chip and reprogramming it.. But never found any details on how to do it. So was left with a set of blobeye STi dash clocks which I couldn’t use. Did look into doing silly thing like old school hack of attaching a drill to clock it up, in this case creating some sort of timing/clock circuit to increment the milometer, but never figured out how to do it..

However couple months back I came across an post on NASIOC(I think)[Edit: nope it was rs25.com] where someone had detailed how to update the eeprom to set new milage! Sweet! So promptly went on eBay and bought a EEPROM programmer! Was going to build one myself but the cost of components vs about £12 on ebay for a pre-built one, the choice was obvious.

De-soldered EEPROM chip!

Unfortunately because I’d pulled the STi dash apart so many times to see how it worked. I’d damaged couple of the needles to the gauges didn’t work properly.. But did mean I was more happy with disordering the chip from the dash and give it a go.. Worst case it doesn’t work.

WRX Mileage

STi Dash Mileage

Reporgrammed STi Dash Mileage!

Result! So easy to do but it worked.. Due to the way the milage is stored I couldn’t quite get an exact match got my car so got it as close as possible over the actual milage, so safe enough.. Besides a few years ago a sensor on the gearbox took a wobble and decided not to send information about speed/milage so I know about 50 miles hadent been recorded..

Cool! So at least I know I could now match the milage. But I had a duff STi dash.. So back on eBay I went and rather go for an STi dash I tried to hunt down a blobeye WRX dash. Rev counter in the middle and sharper looking dials and would look like a standard dash on my WRX. STi logo on the dash when it’s a WRX wouldn’t quite fit (please ignore the fact I have a STi intercooler fitted which clearly has the STi logo plastered over the top of it 

While waiting for the blobeye dash to arrive from eBay had a silly thought. The layout of the duff STi dash was the same as the WRX dash I was getting. But the STi has the shift light. He hee.. So is it possible to swap the circuit board with the updated milage into the blobeye WRX dash. Answer YES! Result being a WRX dashboard which is looks much nicer than the bugeye dash with red needles, sharper gauges, rev counter in the middle and now with a shift light! Yeehaaa!!!

Before:

After:

Note: I didn’t cut out a hole for the shift light. instead the ‘x1000r/min’ text lights up 😀