Why are you making this?
One of us has a DashHawk. We found that there were several people who had cables that failed and MSD wasn't selling any replacements. Seems kind of dumb to have to throw away a perfectly good gauge because the cable is bad, so we decided to offer one to the community.
Is it the same as the factory cable?
We use Molex 8 pin connectors for the end that plugs into the DashHawk, not some cheap clone. We don't use the same OBD-II connector as the MSD DashHawk cable. We use a lower profile connector that doesn't take up as much space, nor does it stick out as much into the driver footwell. Electrically, the pin out is EXACTLY the same as the factory unit.
Why does your replacement cable have less pins than the one that came with the DashHawk?
While the MDS DashHawk cable has all 16 pins installed, only 5 of them are connected to anything. There is power, ground, signal ground, CAN-HI and CAN-LOW. The rest of the pins don't do anything. We use those 5 plus one more (Pin 9 on the OBD-II connector) so that the PC board inside the connector is stable.
