The great speedometer experiement...conclusion.

[Dave Hord]

Quick background: needed a second odometer in front of my navigator for this
coming weekend...the rally computer died recently.

Following Huw's suggestion of getting a speedometer for my car out of a wreck,
I went looking.  Picked up a 5000 electronic speed, which although not made for
my car, would probably work.

After some help from another lister as to the wiring diagram for the 5000
speedo (sorry, your name/email is on my other computer) I wired the speedo up
to my car.

I spliced into teh speedo imput signal right behind my instrument cluster.  I
spliced into my external tachometer for + and - power. All connections were
wrapped and electrical taped for a temporary test.

Two days of driving taught me two things:

1) there was a loose connection somewhere
2) I remembered that the 5000 has a different tire diameter, therefore a
different number of pulses per kilometer...thus my 'external' gauge is off my
about 10%.

I soldered the connections figuring that it would solve the loose
connection...and went driving again.

Apparently the 5000 speedo unit I picked up for $50 (entire cluster) is rather
flaky. It works...and well...for a while, and then just suddenly stops
working...and then suddenly starts again.  It's rather entertaining to watch a
speedometer jump from 0-140km/h in less then a second...

I highly recommend this upgrade, it appears it's worth close to 1500 horsepower!

Anyways, a flaky external odometer wouldn't work for me regularly, yet alone
rallying...so I cut the connections and did what I should have done from the
begining...

I'll post photos on my website in early march about how I wired up three
cycling compters to display all the information we need, in front of both the
driver and the navigator...

Cost me $40, and an afternoon...well, okay $90 if you count the pooched 5000
speedo!

-Dave



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