Monit G100

This article covers the un-packing and installation of the Monit G100, a full review of the unit and its operation will follow in a future article after it is tested at a blind rally.

What’s in the box?

The first thing you notice about the Monit G100 is its small sized box. When you open the box, the actual unit is even smaller than the Monit remote foot reset switch that we ordered at the same time. Inside the box is the G100 unit, a couple of stickers, a small wiring harness and an instruction manual. Immediately it was noticed that the Monit unit is not supplied with any M4 fixing screws to suit the threads on the back of the unit or a paper/card template to aid with drilling and mounting.

Opening the optional remote foot reset switch, reveals a sturdy looking unit which is supplied with fixing screws, however again a card or paper template would make drilling and mounting much easier, particularly into a navigators foot rest. With the tiny mass of the rally computer (100g), a light weight alloy bracket is all that is required to fix the unit into position. Monit do have optional mounting brackets for dash/doors and a suction cup mount for use on a window or the windscreen.

Mounting

We chose to fabricate our own mount. A small piece of 2mm aluminium was trimmed to shape and careful measurements were taken to drill 2 x 5mm mounting holes and another 12mm hole was drilled for clearance to allow fitment of the GPS antenna. With a custom mount we have full control over height and angle to suit the car and navigator. A few quick measurements and the bracket was bent at the correct angles to fit the space on the WRX dash. A mock assembly showed everything was set right and then a coat of matt black paint was applied to give a neat finish and reduce glare.

Whilst the paint was drying on the mount, the foot reset switch was fitted to the existing navigator’s foot rest in the car. This required a little lateral thinking as the foot rest is not easy to remove or install in the car, being held down by a series of large rivets. A small alloy bracket was made up to allow the foot switch to be fixed using an accessible bolt already in the foot rest. At this point it was found that the factory installed nutserts in the back of the foot reset switch were all loose! This made it difficult to install the supplied fixing screws as the nutsert threads were turning whilst trying to tighten the fixing screws. A minor issue we will feedback to Monit.

Wiring

When the paint had dried the G100 unit was screwed to the mounting bracket using 2 x M4 screws we (luckily) found in the bolts tray. The GPS antenna was screwed into the back of the unit and the wiring harness was plugged in. With everything ready, the mounting bracket was then fixed to the WRX dash using self tapping screws. To aid in quick removal of the Monit from the car, the power supply and foot reset switch were wired using separate 2 pin plugs.
During power wiring to the car, a small fuse was fitted inline in an accessible position on the positive lead.

In reality if you didn’t need a remote zero switch, the Monit G100 only needs a power and an earth wire (+ the GPS antenna) connected to be operational and ready for use. We opted for the magnetic base GPS antenna, there is also a hard mount antenna available as well. The antenna was located in a suitable position on the car’s roof with the antenna cable following the roll cage and the spare cable neatly coiled and tied up out of the way. Monit also recommend using tape as an additional restraint for the magnetic antenna to eliminate the chance of the antenna falling off the car.

With all the connections made, the unit was powered up for a quick test, ready to go for the rally.

After the rally, we’ll follow up with a review of the Monit G100 and how it performed.