Hey guys some one trashed the speedo on my bike while parked, wanting to get a replacement but my bike has 5k miles, has anyone ever rolled the odometer back on one of these??? I would like my new speedo to have the same miles as the old one or close as i can. If you have how do i do it and how hard is it? Does a drill work? How would i hook it up??

This is my wanted post! Thanks guys/gals

http://gstwins.com/gsboard/index.php?topic=48855.0

quite illegal even If I did I would never admit it here.

haha i have a feeling that's not exactly the reason you want to know this!

jk it's understandable.

Yes it can be changed ....as long as you do not go under the actual miles of the vehicle it's not a "problem". Dunno the letter of the law crap on it.... Rolling back the odometer to read less miles than actual to sell something is definitely a BIG no-no.

Search for White Face gauges ( an old post of mine ) on how to dismantle the speedo.  I think you can figure out the rest after that...

Again... Super illegal to do it just to make a bike have less miles for sale....

I don't have any newer speedo's here ....If you find a speedo with 1 or 2k miles over I'd just say go with it....explain it to whoever you sell it to later on that the bike has less miles than indicated...

The title says 4k and i have no real interest in selling the bike right now and the odo say 5k something........i just want the milles to be as close to whats on the bike as possible so when i do sell the bike i dont have some wierd story about the miles. If i can grab a camara from a friend i will post some pics of my mangled speedo, looks like someone attacked it with a ice pick...........anyways if anyone has a speedo with around the same miles (5k) that would be perfect so i dont have to mess with it, but ethier way legal or not it wont realy stop me

If I were buying a bike, and had any reason to suspect the odometer had been tampered with, I would probably walk away from the deal on the spot.  Just note the mileage on the old odometer when it's removed from the bike, and the mileage on the new odometer when it's put on the bike. Write it down on a piece of paper, attach pics if you want to, and keep it with the title. I would be more likely to believe an explanation of that, than I would any story I was told, if I suspected the odometer had been tampered with.

Quote from: newbieThe title says 4k and i have no real interest in selling the bike right now and the odo say 5k something........i just want the milles to be as close to whats on the bike as possible so when i do sell the bike i dont have some wierd story about the miles.

Wha?

You're going to completely disassemble the speedometer housing (which can't be done without being obvious) to roll back the odometer (illegal) of your replacement speedometer (designed specifically to be difficult to roll back) 1,200 miles???

Go for a ride and forget about it .  

no.....the title currenlty says 4k...........the odo read 5k somthing from the miles i have put on the bike..........someone trashed the speedo i got vandals.......no joke........i will try and locate a camara (i know it sounds fishy)......but i am going to purchase a replacement speedo and if i cant find one near the same miles (5K)......i would like to roll it back or forward some how............

you roll it back you will see white lines IIRC between the numbers. ( evidence of rollback) NOT ADVISABLE illegal in most states if not all of them. that aside, get one younger than yours aka less miles, and manually move it FORWARDS to match. OR get oen thats close, THEN photo the mangled one showing its mileage, as well as the mileage on replacement speedo, take those photos and archive them, in case you sell bike, so you can document it

what if you chuck the speedo cable up in a drill and tie the trigger down for a while?

It would eventually roll back over to zero but I wonder how long that would take.

Quote from: dohabee on June 23, 2009, 09:50:33 PM
what if you chuck the speedo cable up in a drill and tie the trigger down for a while?

It would eventually roll back over to zero but I wonder how long that would take.

It would take quite awhile and pretty much ruin your drill...

No white lines tho...

If you dismantle the speedo you can  slide the big end numbers away from the others enough to change the numbers on the odometer  (they still are engaged but they can be moved...).

AGAIN.... probably illegal with the letter of the law.

I'd just keep hunting for one that's close to what you need ( a little over..)

Keep the mangled one. Photo of both when you install the new one. Write up and attach to title (using checkbox for "mileage not as stated on odometer" at sale time) Keeping the old one to go with the bike and the photo should keep any reasonable buyer happy - certainly more happy that any evidence that it's been tampered with (which rolling back or opening the capsule will certainly leave.)

Why worry?
The figure recorded on the odo is no 100% guarantee of the bikes actual milage and any clued-up buyer will know this. Esp on a bike like the GS where the clocks can be changed in minutes and used one are cheap and plentiful. Its the oldest trick in the book, you keep two sets of clocks and swap them over every few months. After a few years the odo might say 10k but the actual figure will be 20k and the secondhand value considerably more. Illegal and moraly wrong...YES, but does this stop people doing it...NO, its totaly undetectable and the practice is RIFE!. I will even admit to doing the same thing myself in the past  and as a result I pay little attention to the odo and claims of low mileage when buying and focus more on condition and any documented history.

Go on ebay and check out used GS5 speedos, those with a low figure on the odo always go for considerably more money than those with a higher figure.........wonder why that is? 

Nothing to it. Use an angled pick, and gently go through the bulb hole and flip the digits.
Usually the 10K and the 1K and the tenths and the singles are easier to change, the hundreds the tenths and I think even the singles are not. but you get a sufficiently long angled pick you should be able to get in there good.
Nothing is sufficiently fool proof, for a sufficiently talented fool.
Cool.
Buddha.

Thanks Buddha - finally someone actually ANSWERED the question.
99% of people would know it IS ILLEGAL. to wind it back.
But as stated  - who cares.....



Cheers ...

I do it all the time ... usually in front of the buyer ... in a way I tell them that if I had wanted to cheat them, they'd never have known.

The situation I am referring to, is where I swap a speedometer for one I have sitting around. I ask them if they care for it to be close to the real mileage ... then I tell them I will set this one here and swap it in and show them the way I did it. I am going to be doing it with a maxim I own in a few days.

In a lot of cases people buy from me due to a honest answer they get, even if its bad ... nothing irritates anewbie buyer more than "I dunno" ...

One time someone asked me if the bike was crashed ... and I replied, yes, atleast 7 times. More than likely ~8 because some scratches were on when I got it. I had replaces all the body panesl, handle bars, turn signals, headlight shell, guage cluster cover, engine cases etc etc with other stuff that had a different set of scratches ...

Cool.
Buddha.

I can't remember without having it infront of me, but don't you have to record the miles every year when you register a bike? If you started when you got it, you could always just leave 500 miles on the clock per year instead of the 5000 you rode, but really I don't see it as being too touchy of a subject because I don't think you'd be able to buy a bike with 40k miles on it, roll them back to 5k, and sell the bike as is because they'd catch it when you tried to register it, atleast in Pennsylvania. Unless I'm wrong about the milage on the registration.... then yes, you could do that.

In NJ you don't have to record the mileage when you register the bike every year.  Only the title states the mileage when you purchased the bike.

Yea they dont care in NC except when you register for the firt time in your name, and even so, you can write the miles, they dont cross check it.
Also I turn it to show the miles it would have on the title, cos I swapped the speedo, so its not going to be off from that. I'd say, came to me with 14K and a busted speedo, I put in one with 25K on it, that is now showing 26.5, so I put 1500 on it, so 15.5 is the approximate actual miles, how about I go 16K. Some like that.
Cool.
Buddha.

Does the mangled one still work?  Just use it until it matches, then put on the pretty one.  Should only take a month or two.  (Alternatively, you could get a third speedo, and just use it to measure the requisite 1200 miles.)