Hello All.
Just over a month have I had my first bike, 2004 GS500F, but I have put about 1500 miles on it, a good chunk highway miles.
It seems that the Speedometer is about 10% innaccurate at times.
I was riding with a budy, and I know pretty well that she always goes the speed limit, very safe, no risks type of rider. The speed limit was 45 on this road. I look down at my spedo and I am keeping an even 50.
On the highway this seems to be worse, I know that I enjoy speed, but I find it hard to believe that only when I am out of my Motorcycle, does all the traffic magically speed up so that I can only keep up with them when my spedo shows 80. ( I am pretty sure they are doing 65-70).
1. Is the speedometer known to be inaccurate?
2. Is there anything to do about the stock one? (Calibrate, clean, tweak)?
3. Does this affect the tripodometer? If the trip gets mileage from the rotation of the wheels, I would assume it gets it using the speedometer, which if its off, is the trip off?
4. Is there anything aftermarket I can purchase to fix? (I have an iphone and I have seen iPhone mounts, I suspect I could get a MPH app to get me my speed)
Thanks guys!
A lot of factory speedos aren't accurate - it's the manufacturers way of keeping you from speeding all the time.
While there is a way to "fix" the factory gauge, it's really not worth the effort IMO. You can however, replace the stock gauges with universal digital ones though. Koso, Acewell, etc, are all programmable.
Just about every bike is 7% off..they all read faster than you are going.
-CS
Yup mine to, mine is about 10% tho, but i have a GPS on mine if i need to get a more accurate reading.
Stokes,
The Speedo is out by up to 10%.
The Odo is spot on, however.
Ride 10% higher everywhere you go and you'll be pretty close to actual. :thumb:
Michael
Quote from: Big Rich on August 12, 2012, 07:08:24 PM
A lot of factory speedos aren't accurate - it's the manufacturers way of keeping you from speeding all the time.
While there is a way to "fix" the factory gauge, it's really not worth the effort IMO. You can however, replace the stock gauges with universal digital ones though. Koso, Acewell, etc, are all programmable.
urgh!! ...there are!!! ... dunno why i didnt think of searching for this type of thing... bucket'o'korn! .. just for mentioning it at a time i would notice it!
A lot of people put wired bicycle speedometers on, (wireless get too much interference). Advantage is you get a clock then as well. Personally I use a GPS, that way I have accurate speed, but I also record all of my rides so I have a history of where I went, plus stats like average speed, time taken, ascent, descent, also has mapping in it so good for navigation. Being a bicycle GPS its also weatherproof, battery life is about 16 hours, so plenty for most journeys I do and usually lasts me a week of normal commuting and weekend riding.
Construction and use regs across the EU state speedos must not under read but can over read by up to 10%, probably the same in the US.
Suzuki could easily fit a more accurate speedo but why bother, its not needed and the extra costs involved in manufacturing and testing a more accurate one would have to be absorbed or passed on.
As for odos...they are only accurate when the cable is connected :D
We all know speedo's read HIGHER than actual speed.
I ignore this though, and assume its accurate, its saved me from a few tickets.. going past cameras too quick, then realizing that actually i was under the limit. :)
from what i hear / experience, the spedometer is usually off by about 10%, so 50 take of 5 and you get 45 10 is actually 9 40 is actually 36 etc.
For what it's worth...
When I completed the Iron Butt 1000 in October, 2011 Google Maps and the GPS both recorded my route to be 1004 miles.
The odometer on the GS500F recorded 1012 miles. My friend's Ninja 650R recorded 1012 miles. My other friend's VTX1800 Honda recorded 1014 miles. All of us stayed together and never deviated from said plan. Each of us went to different fuel pumps and parking spaces when we stopped, which I consider negligible in the overall calculation. My odometer was a numbered dial version, while the Ninja and VTX were digital.
Based on the information above, the GS odometer was off by 0.796813%.
Quote from: jestercinti on August 13, 2012, 02:21:53 PM
For what it's worth...
When I completed the Iron Butt 1000 in October, 2011 Google Maps and the GPS both recorded my route to be 1004 miles.
The odometer on the GS500F recorded 1012 miles. My friend's Ninja 650R recorded 1012 miles. My other friend's VTX1800 Honda recorded 1014 miles. All of us stayed together and never deviated from said plan. Each of us went to different fuel pumps and parking spaces when we stopped, which I consider negligible in the overall calculation. My odometer was a numbered dial version, while the Ninja and VTX were digital.
Based on the information above, the GS odometer was off by 0.796813%.
That's also assuming you rode perfectly dead center in the lane the entire time. weaving in you lane increases mileage, and we all weave a bit going around corners.
Also note that the tenths and hundreths place wasn't factored in. It was not intentional, just not recorded.
So if my odo read 7000 at the start of the trip, it read 8012 at the end. It could have been 7000.0 and 8012.9.
My speedo on my Vstrom is 17% off,all I did was check it with my GPS and now I know how far off it is ..
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
people really trust the GPS to be 100% accurate. I have a hard time believing it to be entirely accurate because whats receiving your signal is orbiting the Earth...thats a long distance for any information to travel...just my .02.
Spot on for me !!!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
GPS is only ~100% accurate when traveling in a straight line with no changes in elevation. The newer the GPS, the more accurate the speed will be.
Quote from: skudman on August 14, 2012, 11:43:37 AM
people really trust the GPS to be 100% accurate. I have a hard time believing it to be entirely accurate because whats receiving your signal is orbiting the Earth...thats a long distance for any information to travel...just my .02.
GPS speedometers are more accurate
at highway speeds. At highway speeds, you have to understand that the contact between the tire and the road is not 100% static--your driven tire (or tires) is slipping. The GPS calculates a normalized speed based on position and doppler shift. When the space traveled over a predetermined length of time is greater, the accuracy of the GPS calculation increases. So no, it is not 100% accurate (nothing is), but at highway speeds it is much more accurate than a mechanical speedometer.
The speedo is run off the rotation of the front wheel (undriven). They could make the speedo more accurate if they wanted, but they would rather make the bikes appear faster and riders to get fewer tickets. Also they want to avoid the liability of riders saying, "The speedo said I was only doing 60 and the cop told me he clocked me at 65!".
I had a previous car speedo calibrated to absolute accuracy so it was spot on at that point in time (tyre wear will affect it). Then had all GPS units in the car, went on to the highway with a dead straight section of near flat road and each GPS was in agreeance with the speedo. So I basically trust the GPS to be more accurate than the speedo itself. Yes GPS will occasionally have errors in readings (I have traveled at speeds grater than Mach 1 on my bicycle apparently), but at least these become obvious. I've found the GPS is good for knowing how accurate your speedo is so that you can at least use the speedo with more confidence.
Quote from: bombsquad83 on August 14, 2012, 12:07:50 PM
The speedo is run off the rotation of the front wheel (undriven).
Well that makes good sense. A lot of car speedometers run off a speedometer gear on the transmission output shaft, which tracks the speed of the driven wheels without compensating for slip.