Z1r battery gauge

Z1r Gurus....the battery gauge stays at 0 all the time....off or on.
My question is should it move to the positive side when running like in cars?

everyone i have ever been around was like that :pinch: .

leon

I new u would chime in owning 3.
So that's the way they are ...evening with the battery disconnect it does not move.
Wierd...
Thx

What does it do when you shut the engine off, and turn on the headlight and emergency blinker?
If nothing... I'd say it is worthless and total junk.

Mine never really worked properly, it showed more negative than positive, even then the needle barely moved. I eventually replaced it with a more appropriate volt meter.

i never knew whether it was just crappy gauges or minimal charging system really just barely making any juice. :whistle:


leon

Check voltage....there is voltage at the meter but meter does notion.

Bozo....what kind of meters are u using....does the Tech have built in shift light.
I would like that

Well... for one thing, the original gauge looks like it says AMPS..... a current meter.... that means there is a very low resistance, precision "shunt resistor" in series with the battery voltage.
In a sense, it is still a volt meter but it is not measuring battery or charge voltage.
The meter is measuring the very tiny voltage drop across that shunt resistor, while under some kind of load, steady state or charging the battery while running all the electrics.
However, EVERY current (AMPS) meter I've ever dealt with , if working, will show some kind of deflection when presented with different loads.... like I previously had mentioned.

Spdy, I'd change the gauge. A volt meter is better to monitor the battery.
Steve

spdygon wrote: Check voltage....there is voltage at the meter but meter does notion.

Bozo....what kind of meters are u using....does the Tech have built in shift light.
I would like that

The large gauges are from speedhut fitted to the original spare gauge shells I had. The speedo is GPS and the tacho does have rev lights which work really well (mine are set at 9,500rpm).
Sorry to get off the original topic.
My answer still stands the ampmeter never worked properly, I did try various resistive loads which helped a bit.

The gauge is just useless. Mine doesn't move at all unless the engine is running, and then it just wags back and forth around the zero mark due to vibration. No actual information is displayed.

I've had two amp gauges in my bike, and bench tested them both, so I know the gauge itself is working fine. I've never actually measured the shunt wire with a precision ohm meter, so it's possible that the value of the shunt is incorrect on my bike. But I'm pretty certain that the wire is in place (not cut out or shorted), so it shouldn't be any lower resistance than the factory intended.

The FSM says that the "+" side is charging and the "-" discharging. It also says the shunt is 1300mm, but doesn't give enough information to figure out how much battery current the gauge is designed to show. I suspect that the current required to cause a substantial needle deflection would only be present if there were a serious issue, a current large enough to blow some fuses. I suspect they sized the max deflection for the max current (maybe that 20 amp main fuse), and so normal charge or discharge doesn't really register.

Anyone have a 4-wire milli-ohm meter handy (and a Z1R harness) to measure the shunt? I don't have access to one at the moment.

If you put a decent digital, volt meter with it set to current, in series with your amp meter, you could measure the actual current through it at any load. Like the headlight on engine off. Current is constant through a series circuit.
If you also knew the DC volts at that exact same load... then use Ohm's Law.
Ohms = Voltage/Current.