February 25, 2005

  Sometime last year my speedo cable quit. At the time I was too busy to have it replaced, so I left it unattended. Having installed my Sigma electronic speedometer on the handlebar, I was quite safe that I had speed and odometer displays everytime. This week I decided it was about time (!) to replace the broken speedo cable. So, I went to my local BMW dealer, bought a cable for 18 euros, then I went home and installed it.
  Taking out the old cable, I realized it was not broken, but rather had become too stiff to work! So, I checked the speedo drive as well, and found that it was ground!
  New visit to BMW dealer, bought the speedo drive and late afternoon yesterday I installed it. By the way, I replaced the front pads as well, with new Carbone-Lorraine ones.

  
Then I realized the speedo had stopped working at 31454 km's, while in the meantime I had recorded 38742 on the Targa. (The showing right now is 31532/38828, but I did the 78 of them yesterday with the speedo working! For the 2km remaining, read below...

  
I took one of my old r/c cars, a fine-working Schumacher Cougar 2, unsoldered the motor, and in in its place I soldered another motor, which I clamped on a pink motor work-stand. I cut the old speedo cable to be about 40cm long, and attached it to the motor's shaft with a small silicone tube.

  
Then I installed a freshly charged 2500mah NiCd battery in the car, turned on the radio and pushed the transmitter trigger!

Wanna see how this all worked?!



Right click on above image, and press "save as" to see a 56sec video of the BMW Speedo showing OVER 250km/h!!!!!!!!

Actually after 2 minutes of running, and with everything getting warm the speedo had advanced 2 km's only. Warm? Yes: The battery, motor, speed control, cable and the speedo itself! I quit it! I reinstalled everything back on the bike, and I think I will just have to remember every time that my speedo shows 7300 km's less than what it should!