New GTA Mod Adds Configurable Car HUD and Fuel System to Single-Player

A 14-kilobyte script file is doing something that full realism overhauls have been fumbling for years: staying out of the way. 1803Creations released version 1.0 of "1803's Car HUD + Fuel System" on April 3, 2026, and in five days it pulled 218 downloads from GTA5-Mods, a respectable early count for a script with no custom models, no audio files, and no in-game menu to speak of.

The HUD displays five data points: speed, current gear, compass heading, current road name, and fuel level. All five are controlled through a single file, CarHUDDisplay.json, where you can toggle each field independently and switch between miles and kilometers. Refueling station locations live in a second JSON file, which is where the mod's appeal to roleplay builders becomes obvious: you can define a custom fuel economy without touching vehicle handling meta at all. The fuel system itself is optional, flipped on or off inside the same config, meaning casual players can run the HUD overlay with zero resource management overhead.

What the 1803 script is not is a Swiss Army knife. Suites like VHud carry inventory systems, hunger and thirst bars, seatbelt mechanics, and a multi-key configuration menu that opens on F12. That depth has its uses, but it also brings a longer dependency chain and a bigger surface area for things to break after a Rockstar patch. At 14 KB with two JSON files and a single DLL dropped into GTAV\Scripts, the 1803 mod has far fewer moving parts.

The first place things go wrong is a ScriptHookVDotNet version mismatch. The mod requires SHVDN v3 specifically, meaning ScriptHookVDotNet3.dll, and if you're running an older SHVDN v2 environment or a mixed install from a previous mod session, the script silently fails to load. Check your ScriptHookVDotNet.log in the GTA V root folder immediately after launch: a clean load prints the script name and version; a version mismatch prints an assembly error on that same line instead. The community nightly build v3.7.0-nightly.95, published on February 20, 2026, is the current build confirmed to run on both Legacy (1.0.3717.0) and Enhanced (1.0.1013.17) GTA V builds.

The second failure point is rendering conflicts with other HUD mods already running. The 1803 script registers no hotkeys because all its configuration is JSON-driven, which eliminates one whole class of conflict. But if another HUD is drawing to the same screen region, you will get overlapping elements. On-screen placement adjustments are exposed inside CarHUDDisplay.json: move the 1803 overlay before stacking it with anything else.

When a Rockstar update drops and the HUD goes dark, the fix sequence matters. Update ScriptHookV first, from AB Software Development's download page, before launching the game at all. ScriptHookV needs to be current before SHVDN can initialize; running an outdated ScriptHookV under a new game build is what causes the majority of "nothing loads" reports you see on mod forums. Once ScriptHookV is current, pull the latest SHVDN build. If the nightly breaks something, the stable release page on GitHub carries dated rollback builds. After relaunch, the log file tells you within seconds whether the 1803 script is live: look for "1803's Car HUD + Fuel System" by name in ScriptHookVDotNet.log, not just a generic initialization line.

The v1.0 label suggests 1803Creations is treating this as a foundation. The JSON-driven architecture means adding display fields or adjusting refueling radius requires no recompiling, which is exactly the right design philosophy for a script meant to survive across game updates without a patch of its own.