Speedo Help - Calling All Electrical Experts

[grant81rs]

Gidday Folks,

Yes calling out to all experienced electrical persons on the site for some welcomed knowledge to point me again in the right direction

Bike is a K1100LT 10th Month 1993 - ABS 2

Ok I have power to the speedo housing as my ABS lights, hazard and tacho works...

The rear sensor has power to it, tested with a low pulse tester?

The background lights in the housing are working...

All my fuses have been tested and are working well...

So I have removed the speedo housing itself from the bike this morning, hooked up the testing light to the negative terminal on the battery and gone hunting in the pin sockets with the test light on the speedo cluster wires and only 5 of all the pin sockets light up when tested?? I gather this is not good??? BTW I had the ignition on and headlight working when testing..

I pulled the speedo apart, cleaned the pins and sockets thoroughly and also the 3 pin connector

Looking at the bike from the front if it was all assembled again I had 2 sockets light up with the test light on the left side row and 3 light up with the test light on the right side row

Should all of these sockets be active and light up the test light when testing?? I'm no expert of this but I thought yes they should be..

What would my next step be to take...

many thanks once again

[Major Softie]

I see three problems for us here.

1. Boxerworks has few people familiar with the K's

2. Could you provide us with a schematic? People familiar with electronics can then help even if they aren't familiar with the model

3. What initial problem led to this investigation? It's easier to solve a problem if we know what it is.

[ME 109]

3. What initial problem led to this investigation? It's easier to solve a problem if we know what it is.

A speeding ticket.

[grant81rs]

Gidday,

Yes i know this site is not geared towards K model bikes, but the link is here so i thought i would just jump on board and see what comes of it...

Why the speedo problem??

Well i brought the bike last week from a small inner city bike shop, it was traded with a speedo issue, he being a non beemer man tried to fix it, gave up in the end and the bike gets pushed to the back of the shop....
i knew this, got it cheap and bring it home on the trailer.

So now i ask the speedo questions.

UPDATE: Today after the speedo housing was cleaned, the pins and socket connections were buffed up, I now have power to the speedo needle which was the only thing that was not working..

I turned the key and the needle went right around to the max speed and stayed there, it returned to 0 when I turned off power...

At least I now have power to the needle...

BTW, I have cleaned all of the connections of the speedo wiring that I can see, I have followed the wire trail from front to back and also cleaned the rear sensor on the final drive which has power running to it.

Must keep searching for info to fix and sort this issues, if you can suggest anything else, please just say so.

[grant81rs]

Gidday jeff,

The way this thing responds at the throttle, i think that may just happen some day....

[Major Softie]

LIke I said, if we could have a reference to a schematic online, that would help. Without that, the only suggestion I can make (now that you have the new problem of it pegging the speedo) would be to plug in a known good unit, and thus eliminate either the speedo itself or the wiring as the problem. Otherwise you may spend your time chasing your tail on one, while the problem lies in the other.

[grant81rs]

Gidday fellas,

Just reporting in that all is good with my new K1100 beemer project, had the tank, inner fairing panels and speedo off and on many times searching for the non working speedo needle fault and I have come to the conclusion that it is the housing unit itself that is the problem...
Have posted on other K BMW forums, spoken to many K owners over the internet, tested this that and the other and everything always points back to the housing.

Hence I purchased yesterday a NOS original complete speedo for a K1100 1993 from Germany ebay, now I just have to wait the 3 weeks for delivery and then see if it is was the problem.

In the meantime I will just keep cleaning the innards and bring this bike back to a very neat looking K1100..

many thanks

[Major Softie]

Gidday fellas,

Just reporting in that all is good with my new K1100 beemer project, had the tank, inner fairing panels and speedo off and on many times searching for the non working speedo needle fault and I have come to the conclusion that it is the housing unit itself that is the problem...
Have posted on other K BMW forums, spoken to many K owners over the internet, tested this that and the other and everything always points back to the housing.

Hence I purchased yesterday a NOS original complete speedo for a K1100 1993 from Germany ebay, now I just have to wait the 3 weeks for delivery and then see if it is was the problem.

In the meantime I will just keep cleaning the innards and bring this bike back to a very neat looking K1100..

many thanks

Not sure what the thanks were for (as I'm not sure we were any help at all

Hopefully you have correctly diagnosed the problem. Regardless, that new cluster will make the whole bike feel brand new when your'e sitting on it, just like a new windshield makes a car feel new.

[grant81rs]

Gidday,

Today the courier called by my signshop with a box in hand, Woohoo! I love a self brought gift, so straight home I went which is only about 2kms from my factory, I dived into the resto shed and then with a boxcutter in one hand I quickly made a mess of the cardboard box and in the other I was holding one brand new complete 1993 BMW speedo housing.

I brought it as NOS from a German seller off German ebay, ya gotta love google translator, all up including postage it was $270.00, and I have been told that they are $1200.00 here in Oz.

After reading info, trolling and asking questions on bmw forums, checking, cleaning wires and sorting out various issues of what might be wrong with my old speedo over a few weeks, I was quoted $120.00 just to have my old speedo land on the counter of a speedo repairer in Melbourne not including courier costs there and back and also no guarantee that they could fix it, so I bit the bullet and got a new one hoping the problem would be solved.

So I plug the new one into the bike, tighten the small backing screw up, reach for the key and hit the "GO" buttons?

YES! everything works and I NOW HAVE A WORKING SPEEDO!

Speedo problem solved, now to continue on the ABS.

Many thanks for any info and advice forwarded over the last few weeks.

Much appreciated.

[dwerbil]

Good for you, Grant!