What to consider before buying aftermarket speedo / tach

Hi everyone, I recently bought a 1978 KZ400A and stripped it down and am slowly putting it back together, i am working on my handle bars right now and my old tach and speedo are pretty beat up. I see there are some electric ones that are a little pricey but i wouldn't mind putting one on. Has anyone ever put a newer speedo on an older bike? Any advice on what to look for when picking one out? Splicing, etc?

PS this is my first motorcycle so i am not super educated haha!

Thanks!

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Don't know your model bike but from the year I suspect your rev counter will be cable driven from the cam shaft and the worm drive will need to be blocked off to stop oil pouring out the cam cover when the engine is running. A new one will be electronically driven and will need wiring in. Does your bike have points or electronic ignition?

When it comes to rpm, I have seen eletrical one often sense on the eletrical power to the coil to pick up the pulses to calculate actual rpm.

For the speed I have seen proximity swith has been installed to detect speed on the wheel.

Your right that is how they work, however pulses from points ignition are often much more powerful and eratic in wave length than pulses from electronic ignition and you need to ensure the rev counter you buy has a chip in it capable of handling points output. thats if you have points of course. A counter capable of points will work with either ignition, a counter only capable of electronic will blow the chip fairly quickly if used with points.

There are small mechanical gauges available, those are probably the cheapest and easiest swap, however all the ones I have seen are not the best quality. There are speedos with magnetic pickups to determine wheel speed. Or if you want to get fancy  Speedhut has GPS speedos, which is what I run on both my KZ's. Like Warren said you will need a tach plug if you go electronic tach. BTW swapping to electronic ignition is always a good idea IMHO, less fuss.

DoctoRot wrote: There are small mechanical gauges available, those are probably the cheapest and easiest swap, however all the ones I have seen are not the best quality. There are speedos with magnetic pickups to determine wheel speed. Or if you want to get fancy  Speedhut has GPS speedos, which is what I run on both my KZ's. Like Warren said you will need a tach plug if you go electronic tach. BTW swapping to electronic ignition is always a good idea IMHO, less fuss.

Could please post what GPS type you have / reccomend?

What about instrument include speed and tacho, with GPS and elec. Tacho of good quality?

I'M using speedhut gauges on both my bikes. They seem pretty good so far. but I had issues with the tach and the the Dyna s ignition on my kz1000, i had to reroute the wires away from my coils and get a noise reducer for the tach. My kz750 is using a C5 ignition and i had no trouble there. The GPS is pretty cool but its sensitive to loosing signal, if i drive under an overpass the needle will drop.

Speed hut gauges are not made for motorcycles. They are not water proof, but resistant. However they also have a lifetime warranty. They can put a bead of silicon around the glass but you will need to make some type of cover for the back to protect the gauge.

The gauges are also very customizable. I designed custom faces and had them make them for me.

Other who has experience with eletrical speed and tacho built into one instrument for motorcycle use?

I know this is an old thread, but I just bought a speedhut gauge speedo/tach combo and am pretty excited to get it. Will post up some pictures when I get it installed and wired up. I asked them if there would be a problem with having points ignition, and they said there was no issue with their gauges and points. However they are including a tach filter just in case, which I will put on when wiring up.

Looking forward for updates!

gordone wrote: Looking forward for updates!

gordone PM sent mate...