Has this ever happened to your Speedo?

[twilmotte]

I have a 2004 R1150RT with 33K on the clock. While on my last camping trip, the speedometer had some early morning spasms while leaving to come back home ... gyrating between 50 to 80 mph while maintaining a steady speed of about 70. Outside temps were only 65 degrees. This condition lasted about 25 miles and then it stopped and "behaved" the rest of the 400 mile trip back home. The odometer readings seemed unaffected. I'm thinking it's a cable binding problem somewhere. I'm also thinking that someone in this forum has experienced the same thing and can tell me what I might expect from here and if it's a difficult and/or expensive fix. TIA

[KDeline]

I would bet your cable is getting ready to break.

[bmweerman]

My guess it is the drive. The little tabs that turn the little plastic gear in there sometimes start eating through the plastic.

 

If that turns out to be the case you can take it apart and fix it with some J B Weld.

 

Good Luck

 

Cameron

[dave_jo]

Every time I ride my BSA I wonder how fast I'm going. If I ever get stopped by a LEO I'll answer his question: Between 40 and 70mph..?

My RT always says I'm going exactly 5% faster than I'm actually going. Something on your bike is coming undone.

[DrPaul]

My RT always says I'm going exactly 5% faster than I'm actually going.

 

My experience has been the same. At 70 mph my '02 R1150RT reads 2 or 3 mph more than the GPS.

[oilmkr]

I have had the same problem with my 2002 RT for the last three years. The spedometer works great for a month or so and then wildly oscillates while I am going down the road at a constant speed. My odometer also does not seem to be affected so I believe that rules out a cable problem. If I look closely I can see the end of the needle oscillating at a very high frequency. I have found that mine is not temperature dependant but acceleration dependant. If I open the bike up to merge onto an interstate or just in a passing situation the speedometer will jump up to 100 to 120 mph while I am only going 60-70 mph. The spedometer will just float up in that range and sometimes fixes itself and sometimes does not. I found that stopping and then restarting usually fixes it for awhile. I hear a high pitched whine when mine is reading high.

 

The shop has checked the cable and sending unit at the tire on multiple occasions and not found any issues. The mechanics thought I was crazy until during one of their test rides after servicing the bike the mechanic looked down and saw the speedometer at 120 mph when he was going 45 mph in traffic. At that point they looked harder and determined that there is something going on inside the speedometer itself. They said that replacing the speedometer is the only solution. For the cost of a replacement I figure that I will live with it until it does this continuously.

[flars]

Do a search on Username 'FLARS' with keyword 'dog' with 'newer than 1 year' for a discussion on possibilities.

[timboaz]

I had the same thing happen to me yesterday while merging on to the interstate near Flagstaff, AZ. It has happened couple of times before in the spring. It is on my 2004 R1150RT.

Timbo

[BeniciaRT_GT]

Mine did that for a while on my 1100RT. It got wilder and wilder and finally i had to replace it (over 100K after doing this for about 8K) when it started swinging so wildly it broke the indicator off on the stop at 0...

 

YMMV (pun intended)