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.
Why did you add a power button?
For two reasons: First is some want to turn the unit off but not remove it or unplug it. This button makes that easy. The second reason is the unit keeps pinging the CAN bus to see if the car is running (so it can start showing data). Some cars don't like that, as it can keep the CAN bus of the car from going to sleep. This in turn can lead to a larger battery current drain. This feature prevents that as well.
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. We spun our own connection boards that allow for integration of the power button into the OBD-II connector housing. 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.
