This is just a quick and dirty
page I threw together. Forgive the lack of bling.
Motogadget's
- "Motoscope Mini" installed on the WR250X
You can read all about it on
the Motogadget
web site (in the upper right click on Products > Series Mini
> Motoscope Mini). Download the manual from their web site and you
can see all the settings and adjustments you can make with the Mini.
And you can watch
this video to see what the Motoscope Mini does. My objective with
this page is to simply explain my installation on my WR-X. In the photo
below what you see is idle RPM. Above that is a bar graph with a line
that moves from left to right as the RPM's increase. Right now I am
just using it for a
tachometer. After several emails with Heiko at Motogadget Support I
came to the conclusion that I didn't want to cut into my OEM speed
sensor. I will install the supplied speed sensor at a later date, and
eventually get rid of the factory meter all together. This will make
room for my next project... an oil pressure gauge.
So first things first. How much was it?
The cost of the Motoscope Mini and the handlebar mounting brackets,
including shipping from Germany came to a grand total of $431.97. The
Mini comes with an instruction manual, a connector kit to make your own
wiring harness plug, a small micro push button to operate the setup
menus and change screens. And it also comes with a speed sensor for
engines not equipped with OEM speed sensors. The only extra item I had
to buy was the handlebar mounting brackets. Both the Mini and the
mounting brackets are made of CNC billet aluminum and come either black
or silver anodized, or chromed.
Mounting the Mini on the stock handlebars does not leave much of a
choice for location. With the crossbar in the way of my riding view, my
only choice was to mount the Mini to the rear side of the center. The
angle that I mounted it did not require removing the handlebars to
tighten the screws. But if you angled the Mini towards the rider more,
the screws would be hard to access without removing the bars. They are
3mm allen screws. One screw through each mounting bracket that thread
into holes in the back of the unit. They suggest a torque of no more
than 4
nm, but not having anything that reads that small I took my chances. I
did use some red loctite and snugged them up pretty good. Tighten it
until the brackets won't slip on the bars and stop there. To dress up
the wire from the Mini, I slipped it inside some old hose I had laying
around. It gives it a nice look from the top side and the blue hose
matches pretty good with the bike's color.
You can see in the above pic that the mounting brackets are two piece
and don't go all the way around the bars. The screws are countersunk
and come up from the bottom. I didn't take any photos of the unit and
brackets before the install, but you can see from these pics what it
looks like.
That was the easy part. Now you have to wire it up. There is a five
wire harness coming out of the back of the unit. The wires are ultra
TINY and not easy to work with. If you're not into micro surgery you
may not want to install this yourself. It took some patience and the
right tools. If you're not into small wiring jobs then I would suggest
getting somebody with some experience to wire it up for you. Making
good connections with small wires is an art. You don't just twist wires
together when you're installing something like this.
Remove the headlight assembly and cut the zip tie holding the wiring
to the meter so you can access the plugs on the back. Oh, and BTW, you
may want to disconnect the battery
before you go any further. Just to play it safe.
It's not easy to see all my
wiring since I have already taped up some
of it, but let me try to explain. It is not that hard, it's just not
easy to "T" in tiny wires into an existing system. I used some bullet
connectors from work. These are the kind used on Yamaha outboards. I
guess you can use whatever connectors you want as long as it's
waterproof. These rubber connectors allow for two wires to mate to
one. I didn't like the plug connector kit they sent with the unit. Not
waterproof enough for me.
Lets start with the power supply wires. Disconnect the four wire plug
on the back of the factory meter. You are going to splice the red
(positive) wire from the Mini to the brown wire coming out of this
plug. The brown wire is the key ON power supply. 12 volts is supplied
to the brown wire when the key is ON. Motogadget does not require a
fuse
for their unit and say it will run on anything from 7-18 volts. The
factory brown wire here is for the turn signals and you will be using
that fuse for the power supply to the Mini. This will allow the Mini to
turn ON and OFF with the key. Do not
connect the Mini's black ground wire at this time.
Now comes the FUN part! You
need to install a push button somewhere on
your bike to operate the Mini and to access the setup menus. All this
is done with one push button. They supply a tiny micro button with the
Mini and I decided to make it work for the time being. It is not a
water proof button, so if you want something that will last, I suggest
shopping around for your own water proof button. Mount it where ever
you like. I wanted to have easy access to the button while I was riding
so I decided to mount it in the left side switch housing so I could
reach it with my thumb, but there is no place to mount it within reach
of my thumb. Upon
looking at the switch housing a little closer I noticed a small plastic
cover
that was on the left side next to the grip. If you take the switch
housing apart it looks like there were provisions made to mount some
sort of switch in the upper area of the housing and possibly this
plastic cover
I mentioned is where the actual switch is mounted.
I pried off the plastic cover and figured out that the micro push
button
will fit in this area with a little dremel tool work. I didn't have to
hog out much material to make it fit. I also drilled a hole for the
button wires to pass though on the curved plastic piece inside the
housing. Then route the wires out with the factory wires and to the
headlight area. The push button has two wires. One connects to ground
and the other to the Mini's green wire. When the button is pushed it
gives a ground to the green wire on the Mini and this activates the
setup mode and menus and allows you to make the various choices. If you
are going to get your own push button it needs to be a momentary push
button, not one you push once for ON and again for OFF. You need a
button that is ON when pushed and OFF when you let go of it.
Take the small plastic piece you pried out of the left switch housing
and drill a hole in it to mount the push button. You will need to take
a razor blade and trim off the clip tabs on the back of the plastic
piece (if you didn't break them off already trying to get it out of the
switch housing) and then use a dremel tool to machine out the back side
of the plastic piece so the button will stuck out far enough to mount
it with the nut. It was delicate work with the dremel tool, but if
you're careful it could be done with a razor knife or some other tool.
My photos don't show my machine work very well but maybe you get the
idea. The plastic piece is too thick and the nut that holds the button
on will not thread on unless you recess the back side of the plastic
piece to make it thinner.
Now you need to get yourself
a small two wire harness or just use two small wires. Solder one wire
to each terminal of the push button and run them through the hole and
out with
the factory wiring to the headlight area. I used a small two wire
harness in my junk pile that came off some old instrument. You can use
anything you want, but they need to be small wires. No bigger than 18
gage I would say. So they fit in the small area where the button goes
and don't interfere with the handlebars or other switches or wiring. I
used a blue and green set of wires. I ran the green wire from the
button to the green wire from the Mini. The blue wire will be connected
to ground (negative) on the bike and be my ground source for the
button. You will need to glue the plastic piece back into the left
switch housing once you have the button installed and wired up. I used
black silicone to hold it in and keep the water out of the housing. Here is what it looks like once
assembled...
Now you need to solve the next problem. When you reinstall the left
switch housing back onto the handlebars you will notice the push button
hits the shoulder of the left grip. My idea was to be able to activate
the button while I was riding remember? With my hand on the grip in
normal riding position I do not accidentally hit the button. I poked a
small hole in the shoulder of the grip for the button to sit in. This
way it is semi-out of the weather and I can still push on the button
through the hole with my index finger while riding. It works pretty
slick if I do say so myself.
Now go back to the headlight area and look at the four wire factory
plug again. The black wire with white stripe coming out of this plug is
the ground for the bike. Splice into this wire the black ground wire
from the Mini, AND the wire
you ran from the button that will be your ground. The other wire from
the button will get spliced directly to the green wire from the Mini.
Now would be a good time to
check your work so far. You have the red and black wires from the Mini
connected and the push button is wired up to ground and to the Mini's
green wire. Flip on your kill switch so the fuel pump doesn't run and
then turn on your key. The Motoscope Mini should light up and work. You
can push the button and scroll through the menus to make sure
everything is operating. Now shut off the key and continue with
connecting the sensors to the Mini.
At this point you should have only two wires left unconnected from the
Mini harness. A yellow wire and a white wire. The yellow wire is for
your tach signal and the white wire is for the speed sensor. I got some
yellow wire and spliced onto the
yellow from the Mini. Now you need to remove the shrouds and fuel tank
to access the ignition coil plug. I did it the hard way and just
loosened the tank and held it up enough to unplug the coil wire. The
coil wire is routed from the coil then forward through an opening in
the frame and out to the left side behind the coolant tank. It was not
easy, but you can feed the coil wire back forward through the hole in
the frame and get enough of it out by the coolant tank so you can cut
back the plastic cover and access the coil wires. Take the yellow wire
you just spliced to the Mini harness and route it down the left side of
the frame to the coolant tank area. Use the factory clips to hold the
yellow wire to the frame where the other factory wiring is located.
Once you have the yellow wire to the coolant tank area, cut back the
black plastic cover over the coil wires to expose them. You will need
to splice your yellow wire to the ORANGE
wire coming from the ignition coil plug. This is important. DO NOT splice into the red wire of the coil
plug. The orange wire will give you a tach signal from the ECU.
Make a good water tight connection with your yellow wire to the orange
coil wire and tape the black plastic cover back over the wires when
you're done. Now gently feed the coil wire plug back through the hole
in the frame to the area under the fuel tank and plug it back onto the
ignition coil. Reinstall the fuel tank and shrouds.
The speed sensor on our bikes puts out a 5 volt signal. The
Motoscope Mini manual says it needs a 12 volt speed signal.
Motogadget's support
guy, Heiko, said my 5 volt OEM speed sensor should work if the polarity
of the signal was correct "and" I might have to install the supplied
resistor. I wasn't too keen on cutting into the OEM
speed sensor and experimenting with resistors, etc... so I have decided
to
install the 12 volt speed sensor supplied with the Mini. This presented
other problems once I got started. First to find a place to mount the
sensor. Actually it is called a dry reed contact sensor. A small
ferrite magnet comes with the sensor. Once you mount the sensor, you
will need to epoxy the magnet to your disc and line it up with the
sensor. This particular sensor requires no more than a 5mm gap between
the sensor and magnet. Mine worked out to be about a 2mm gap.
After several hours of kibitzing and contemplating, I figured out the
best place to mount the sensor was to use an existing hole somewhere.
You could make some sort of bracket to mount the sensor, but this looks
neater. The rear bolt hole for the rear caliper cover seemed to line up
just where I needed it to. The sensor is just long enough to fit
through the rear bolt hole and have enough threads on both sides to
tighten it in place. I used some spare junk from my "treasure chest" to
piece together a spacer and grommet for protection. Ran the wire
through the grommet and the caliper cover and mounted the whole thing
using only the front caliper cover bolt with some loctite on it. It is
fairly solid with just one bolt holding it and there is no tension on
the wire or cover. I ran the wire up inside some old blue hose I had
laying around and up to the headlight area for connection to the white
wire on the Mini.
FYI: The speedometer portion of
the Motoscope Mini is capable of being programmed to different wheel
sizes. It can also be put into a TEACH mode and "learn" your speed to
calibrate itself. There is also a resettable odometer, trip meter and
run time mode. And you can set the RPM range to fit your bike's
operating range. I have mine set to 0-12,000 RPM since the rev limiter
is supposed to kick in at 11,600. You can also set the shift point RPM
which makes the entire gauge flash all it's lights when the specified
RPM is reached. I set it to 11,000 RPM so it would come on before the
rev limiter kicked in. The LED lights in the Mini are adjustable for
brightness for both day and night. Once you set the day and night
brightness the internal light sensor will switch between day and night
automatically.
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www.keysdog.com