Hi, I'm in the throws of putting the oem triple guages in my 2012 Titanium 1.6 tdci.

Anyone got the grey connector lying around? I know you can buy the connector from a company in the UK, but £12 just for the postage 🤔

Got one coming from a breakers now.

I suggest not bothering. The additional ST gauges are not going to work.

These ST gauges are fully CANbus-controlled and require the correct CANbus communication with the PCM. Apart from the 2.0 EcoBoost ST and 2.0 Duratorq TDCI ST engines, very few Focus MK3/MK3.5 PCM types are capable of controlling the additional ST gauges. The 1.6 TDCI PCM is not one of them.

Hi JW, thanks for the advice and info. I was going to tap off the wiring from the Apim connector behind the stereo and also from the Fcim connector that goes to the hazard switch for illumination.

You can tap into the wiring but that will not bring much. The CANbus messages (at least most of them) that are required for the additional gauges to work are simply not present on the non-ST versions.

The values shown by the additional ST gauges are 100% calculated by the PCM. It does not show any real life measured values.

Thanks for that. So none of the gauges would register anything at all? I guess the only thing that would, would be the illumination?

That is correct.

None of the gauges will work except the illumination.

Is there no way at all to induce functionallity?

The only way to do this is to sniff and reverse-engineer the corresponding CAN bus messages from a real Focus ST and build a custom solution to control the additional ST gauges.

This involves:

• Sniffing the CAN bus communication on a real Focus ST.

• Determining which CAN bus messages are used to control the additional ST gauges.

• Reverse-engineering these CAN bus messages (hexadecimal data to meaningful values).

• Since there is no oil temperature sensor or oil pressure sensor, you either have to calculate your own (fake) data—just like Ford does on the real ST—or use aftermarket sensors to measure oil temperature and oil pressure.

• Building a CAN bus gateway that converts the available data (either measured or calculated) into the corresponding CAN bus messages that the ST gauges can interpret.

A CAN bus gateway can be built using an Arduino, ESP8266/ESP32, or a similar MCU combined with a dual CAN bus shield (or two separate CAN bus shields). Building the hardware is relatively easy; sniffing, reverse-engineering, and writing the software is by far the most challenging part. It can be done (I have completed similar projects several times before), but it is definitely not easy.

There is a reason why most people only use the ST gauge pod and either install analog gauges in the pod or mount a display (or an old Android phone) inside the pod to show digital gauges.

I believe you have an understanding of this electronic wizardry more than most and are very talented! Is this something you could do and be compensated for? I along with others would surely be happy to pay for your work.

ST250 gauges in focus mk3 1.6 tdci

ST250 (Mk3 Focus ST) triple gauge pods, which display oil temperature, oil pressure, and boost, can be fitted to a 1.6 TDCi Mk3 Focus, although they are designed for petrol models. Installing them requires specific wiring harnesses and sensors to feed data to the gauges. While physical installation is straightforward due to the shared dashboard design, getting the oil pressure and temperature gauges to function on the diesel engine often requires custom, aftermarket sensor connections rather than plug-and-play compatibility with the car’s ECU. 

What sensors/hardware/wiring specifically are available to buy to make these oem gauges function?

There are no off-the-shelf solutions for this. Everything will need to be engineered and built as a custom solution.

As already mentioned before the additional ST gauges do not show true sensor values. They only show calculated values based on other sensor data and an advanced algorithm.

The ST PCM (hardware and software) are the only ones that have this functionality fully implemented. All of the other engine types did never have the additional gauge pod so there was no need to implement this functionality.


For testing you can temporarily wire the ST gauge pod to the OBD port (power and CANbus). If you are lucky the gauges will display the (calculated) oil pressure but that fully depends on the exact PCM hardware and software versions. The other gauges will not work at all.