Another alternative replacement speedo

[Grim]

I have been reading troutman's thread about the ETB speedos,  and after searching around for alternatives, I recently found this in the UK (although it will be Chinese) from a shop called Rally Designs

 

It's 80mm and 30mm deep after the bezel. I bought it because it looked kind of OK and wasn't massively expensive, it may be a tad optimisic...

It has bewildering instructions, but I think it will do the job (but for how long ) .

I have managed to get it working on a bench, and figured out how to set speed which involves riding at a steady 20 Kph and hitting the button!!!!

 

 

I've just noticed fingerprints (glue?) on the inner bezel, do you think someone manage to open it up and prolong it's life!?

 

 

 

 

[Lucky Phil]

Well I wouldn't be buying it for its aesthetics. Is it waterproof?

Ciao

[Grim]

27 minutes ago, Lucky Phil said:

Well I wouldn't be buying it for its aesthetics. Is it waterproof?

Ciao

Hah. Yeah it's sealed and waterproof, the bezel is actually part of the body, quite solid for a Chinese thing. I guess I might want to think about the back of the original dash cover where the speedo cable used to go, the plug is at the top of this unit, but some kind of silicon sealant might not go amiss. 

 

P.S. The needle does a little "sweep" when powered on, how sweet.

[Lucky Phil]

13 minutes ago, Grim said:

Hah. Yeah it's sealed and waterproof, the bezel is actually part of the body, quite solid for a Chinese thing. I guess I might want to think about the back of the original dash cover where the speedo cable used to go, the plug is at the top of this unit, but some kind of silicon sealant might not go amiss. 

 

P.S. The needle does a little "sweep" when powered on, how sweet.

As long as it shower proof is all thats needed and shielded from slipstream blown water. Fully sealed instruments always end up fogging up.

Ciao

[docc]

26 minutes ago, Lucky Phil said:

As long as it shower proof is all that's needed and shielded from slipstream blown water. Fully sealed instruments always end up fogging up.

Ciao

Interesting take on "waterproof." I've worried myself silly trying to seal the Speedhut clocks.

A couple years on and "so-far-so-good", but looking to ride into Hurricane Dorian for the Fifteenth South'n SpineRaid.  "We shall see what we shall see. Won't we?"

[Lucky Phil]

3 hours ago, docc said:

Interesting take on "waterproof." I've worried myself silly trying to seal the Speedhut clocks.

A couple years on and "so-far-so-good", but looking to ride into Hurricane Dorian for the Fifteenth South'n SpineRaid.  "We shall see what we shall see. Won't we?"

I've had several BMW's and Triumphs with fully sealed instruments and all they do is fog up and stain the inner face of the glass. When it first happened to the BMW instruments back in the 80's I consulted a well known and respected instrument repairer and maker here and he advised me that he had talked to VDO on a trip to Germany about the issue.

They were aware but said they just built the instrument housing to BMW specs. His advice and solution was to vent the back of the instrument via some shielded holes. Worked perfectly.

The Triumph (modern) instruments had vents in the rear case but the baffle fitted inside hindered the ability to cope with changes so the baffles were removed and problem solved.

Ciao 

[swooshdave]

If they are just sealed up there’s always some water vapor trapped inside. What you need is a vacuum or inert gas but as you can imagine that’s overkill. Except for this forum. 

[Lucky Phil]

17 minutes ago, swooshdave said:

If they are just sealed up there’s always some water vapor trapped inside. What you need is a vacuum or inert gas but as you can imagine that’s overkill. Except for this forum. 

I've even seen someone that rigged up a pump to evacuate the air inside the instrument with the inlet air going through a tube with an inline silica gel reservoir. Worked as long as you were prepared to replace the silica gel every week as silica gel is only meant to be used in sealed/confined places not having air drawn through it.

Talk about overkill.

Ciao

   

[swooshdave]

5 hours ago, Lucky Phil said:

I've even seen someone that rigged up a pump to evacuate the air inside the instrument with the inlet air going through a tube with an inline silica gel reservoir. Worked as long as you were prepared to replace the silica gel every week as silica gel is only meant to be used in sealed/confined places not having air drawn through it.

Talk about overkill.

Ciao

   

Wasn’t that on a Breva or something over on WildGuzzi? I think it would have been less hassle to move to a less humid climate.

[rich888]

2 ways to fix foggy dials. 3 if you include filling with dry nitrogen!

1: heat the glass - this doesn't require the dial to be completely airtight.

2: seal the dial so it's 100% airtight with a good desicator inside.

Never tried either!

Just my experience with keeping CCTV cameras fog free.

[Grim]

I've been doing a little bit of research and have found out 2 things, Japanese car manufactureres have teneded to use M22x1.5 threaded gearbox sensors with a tabbed drive, and Ford europe and other Euro makes tend to use M18x1.25 for gearbox sensors and have 3mm square drive; these are the both where the sensors that have a female thread -- I guess it was cheaper at some point to take the gearbox drive "as is" and adapt a sensor to use the existing drive.

Guzzi used M16x1 (super fine) on the V11 gearbox speedo drive, which is weird enough given that earlier and later bikes use M12.... So the pitch is different, we cant use something like a helicoil as an adapter, bugger.

Looking at thread adapters online, precisely none of them go as fine as 16x1, you can find M16x1.265 to M18x1.25 easy enough. Making my own at this size would be fiddly, so on to the Japanese M22 thread.

I was aware of the limited space under the TB link, so didn't want to go mad on height, there are lots of this kind of thing about:

 

But I felt this might go to high, especially with the wires coming out the top, I eventually found this:

 

In the UK this is sold for Toyota land cruisers and Izuzu troopers, but it is common to loads of 90s Japanese vehicles. In the US I found it on Ebay listed as "VEHICLE SPEED SENSOR 3 MALE TERMINALS FOR 1998-2002 ISUZU TROOPER 8971297270".

You can pull the tab drive out of the sensor, and luckily it is 2.5mm square drive behind there, just like the Guzzi speedo drive! So I purchased a (long) length of brass 2.5mm square rod.
I also bough a waterproof Toyota VSS sensor plug, for the sake of being neat and tidy.

Next I made up an aluminium adapter, M16x1 on the inside and M22x1.5 on the outside, I made it long and then cut it down to length, I also had to tap the crappy chinese brass(?) threads as they were a bit notchy:

 

 

I could probably flatten this off a tiny bit more!  Anyway, that is where I am right now,  I should add there is a gasket inside there, so it should prevent oil leaks. Just need to wire everything up now and calibrate the speedo off the sensor.

 

 

[Chuck]

Nice lathe work..

[stewgnu]

6 hours ago, Chuck said:

Nice lathe work..

Indeed.  

Certainly trumps my ‘glue six magnets to the brake disc bolts’ approach!

[Grim]

21 minutes ago, stewgnu said:

Indeed.  

Certainly trumps my ‘glue six magnets to the brake disc bolts’ approach!

Couldn't bring meself to run an extra wire down the front and leave the gearbox drive just sitting there doing nowt!

[Lucky Phil]

Nice work. I love this kind of thing, both the engineering and the added knowledge base.

Ciao