damn bike!

[outlawcrewcab]

i swear every time i fix something on it something else quits. took it on long ride this weekend i noticed a few times befor the speedo rest like when you first turn it on when riding. light stays on and odometer stays on. well now its going off no lights speedo sticking at speed. last night i rode over 60 miles only logging 18 miles. i pulled the center cover off gas tank and check all the conections and all where good. disconect all plugs and replug this am and rode roughly 100 miles today logging 8 miles whats the deal?

 

[Nomad2day]

Hmmmm,
Perhaps that is why there is so many low mileage Big Dogs..:loony:

 

[BigDogBro1]

Just to help out here-

If it's not the electronics then it could be the speedo pick-up sensor is acting up. Missing pulses due to sensor wire connection, breakdown or dirty sensor end towards gear. I'm not sure how the sensor air gap to the gear is set on those installs. It's probably preset into the sensor thread/collar design. If the gap is too large the trigger pulses at high speed will be missed.

 

[ChopperJeff]

When my speedo and odometer quit working, and all connections looked good, I finally took the speedo itself apart. Unfortunately, the wires going into the back of the speedo go directly thru a plug and into the speedo, where they attach to the circuit board. I saw no way of getting the speedo apart to check the wires going to the circut board, so I sawed the damn thing! It was then that I found the speed sensor wire loose from the circuit board. Resoldered it back on, and it's been fine ever since. This was all on my 2005 Chopper. Not sure how the '02 Pitbulls are set up.

A time before that I had found a wire hanging on by a thin thread coming off the battery and going to one of the EHC connectors.

 

[outlawcrewcab]

What bothers me is that it use to be just speedo reset every now and then but now it seems to loose all power. The neutral light and oil light still work I'm lost

 

[ChopperJeff]

When you say it loses power, do you mean just the power to the speedo, as in the light that lights it up, or do you mean that all lights and LEDs go out? Does your tach remain working? I'm assuming your speedo and tach setup is like mine, but I could be wrong.

If the speedo and tach are like mine, then the tach is electrically separate from the speedo, even though they reside in the same enclosure. So if your tach always works, along with the oil and neutral LEDs, then there is something going on with just the speedo connections, namely the speed signal, power and ground. If it does the "sweep" when the key is turned on, then I'd say the power and ground is fine. However, many times the power-on diag will work, but then everything goes nuts once the bike is running as the vibration will shake things around and cause issues when there is a poor connection someplace.

 

[outlawcrewcab]

as u can see the LEDs are working but lightin speedo and speedo not sometimes the lights will stay on and the speedo keeps reseting

 

[ChopperJeff]

Well, that is a bit different than mine. It appears you don't have a tach... is that right? The LEDs are what Big Dog refers to as the annunciator. Just a fancy name for indicator lights.

Is your battery voltage good? I know on later model bikes, if the battery voltage dips below a certain value, then the speedo thinks it's being power cycled and will run thru its diags again.

Can you take the speedo apart?

 

[outlawcrewcab]

yea batterys good. im lost theres something that while riding makes connection some times and not other times. guess i will have to pull all apart and check all connections for signs of arking

 

[Gas Man]

retrace the wires... look for a failure, rubbed wire, ect...

 

[ChopperJeff]

When checking for connections, I always give a little bit of a yank on the wire to make sure it's got a good strong connection to the connector. Sometimes a wire will look fine, but actually be very loose or just hanging on by a thin thread.

Too bad we don't have a means to simulate the output of the speed sensor. I'm sure there's a way to do it, but I'm not sure what the output of the speed sensor looks like, as in pulse amplitude, duration and frequency. If someone knows this information, then one could use a signal wave generator and feed it into the connector coming off of the speed sensor, then verify if the speedo works.