Hi, fellow members. I am not so used to riding motorcycle with low redline and lot of torque at low rpm range, so i always have trouble telling what gear I'm in ( i am newb i know ). I decided to have a gear indicator installed and did some research online. Seems like there are 2 major types out there; one is with magnetic switches that placed close to the shift lever and the other type takes tach and speed input and it learns the ratio in order to tell the which gear it's in. I found Datatool ($110US) being one of the very popular one in US, and i also found a cheap clone of that from ebay for $20. Since it's all experimental i went with the ebay one. So here is a little write up for the installation and i hope this help if some of you wanna do the same mod.
*First of all, i wanna test and see if this ebay indicator works on my 08 XB12S. Before I hacked into my cluster i just quickly wired it up temporarily and tested it. I found the tach signal (pink) going to the cluster DO NOT work with this indicator. so i use the positive crank position signal from the ECM (grey plug pin #18) for tach, and all other wires connect to the wires going into the cluster (see the diagram below). The result is good and it works very well.
Step 1: i cut the housing of the gear indicator because it's too big it wont fit inside the instrument cluster.
Step 2: take the cluster apart and be careful don't break or move the tach or speedo needles.
Step 3: you may wanna re-solder the wires in the back of the indicator so it fits better and drill a small hole of the bottom of the cluster housing to run the wires out.
Step 4: the fun part is to sand/cut out left bottom part of the white casing of the signals. ( it's not used on my XB12 anyways)
Step 5: you may need to sand down some plastic parts inside the cluster housing to fit the indicator. if you got the same Datatool or ebay knob off as i did, i am sure it'd will fit tight in there. so here is the finsihed product.
once it's programmed, you don't needa reprogram it again even the power is disconnected. you can tape up the end of the programming wire (white) and hide it.
if you have any questions or input pls let me know. ~_^
*First of all, i wanna test and see if this ebay indicator works on my 08 XB12S. Before I hacked into my cluster i just quickly wired it up temporarily and tested it. I found the tach signal (pink) going to the cluster DO NOT work with this indicator. so i use the positive crank position signal from the ECM (grey plug pin #18) for tach, and all other wires connect to the wires going into the cluster (see the diagram below). The result is good and it works very well.
Step 1: i cut the housing of the gear indicator because it's too big it wont fit inside the instrument cluster.
Step 2: take the cluster apart and be careful don't break or move the tach or speedo needles.
Step 3: you may wanna re-solder the wires in the back of the indicator so it fits better and drill a small hole of the bottom of the cluster housing to run the wires out.
Step 4: the fun part is to sand/cut out left bottom part of the white casing of the signals. ( it's not used on my XB12 anyways)
Step 5: you may need to sand down some plastic parts inside the cluster housing to fit the indicator. if you got the same Datatool or ebay knob off as i did, i am sure it'd will fit tight in there. so here is the finsihed product.
once it's programmed, you don't needa reprogram it again even the power is disconnected. you can tape up the end of the programming wire (white) and hide it.
if you have any questions or input pls let me know. ~_^
