Volt meter recommendations

[londonboards]

This is my little voltmeter.






It has a clock function as well. It has 3 wires. I wired it into the headlamp circuit (in the UK we have a headlamp on and off switch). With the ignition off you can push the button to read the battery status. With the engine running and the headlamp on, it reads voltage continuosly. It registers about .5 v down from what a multimeter reads at the battery.

It just saved my trip to Spain. Initially when I started the trip at 5K it was showing 13.9 (real time 14.4) but by the middle of day 2 of the trip it was reading 11.9. My battery was not being charged and this little device warned me.

I immediately checked output from the stator and the condition of the reg/rect and both tested good. Something else was amiss. After a while I discovered the bottom screw to the starter solenoid (which has the output from the reg/rect attached to it) was lose. It was only on by a few threads and this obviously caused a bad connection and no charging of the battery.



My trip was saved by this device and I will never go anywhere without one.

Greetings

[posplayr]

That light green white carries all of the current from your charging system and as you have noted the connection is vital to charging. You should invest $30 to but a decent crimper (like the oem one next to it ) and put a proper ring lug on to it.

The crimps are designed to grab the insulation to support the wire. You wire is unsupported and even worse at a 90 degree angle. With a little bit of persistent vibration that copper will flex, work harden and then break-off. You will probably notice that on your volt meter, but why leave that to happen at an inopportune time?


In the same vein, you seem to have wires going all over in that picture. You should use some tie straps to support the wires so that flexing is minimized.

You can search around for a better price, but this crimper is the most versatile I have found. There are perhaps better looking ones, but they are not as versatile. Most crimpers crimp the conductor and insulation together. That requires a good match between 4 elements, 1)the wire, 2.)insulator, 3.) ring lug and the 4.) crimper tool. Most of the times they do not match unless you buy specific wire and lugs for your tool.

This simple tool does allows you to find the best crimp for the insulator and then the conductor or in whatever order you wish. It also has a set of small jaws in the front that can be used if the crimp just doesn't get squeezed enough.

Probably the best feature of the design goes mostly un-noticed. I only realized it when comparing different crimpers that I had purchased. Most designs have the jaws fixed using a central pin. As a result the jaws come together in an arch. That tends to rotate the crimp and twist it.

These simple little crimpers has a two pin arrangement that maintains the jaws parallel. So there is no rotation and they tend to just squeezed together like a vice instead of a twisting motion of the others.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/14-24-AWG-Molex-Style-Crimp-Tool-Wiring-Harness-Crimping-Crimper-Open-Barrel-/151670733580?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item235047bb0c

[mikerophone]

Londonboards, my current voltmeter does time (and ambient temp) too but is 4 times the size of yours. Looks decent, weatherproof?

Thanks posplayr, I've been looking for a decent crimp tool at a good price. Was going to comment on that little green wire/crimp too, but you thoroughly covered it.

My "expensive ($5)"waterproof voltmeter should be here in about a week, glad to hear that it tested out good, nice to have that granular voltage below 10V.

[posplayr]

I received these; they are ideal for mounting in a gauge face or other protected locations. The LED is larger than the waterproof units.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/380687977328?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

There is just a small PCB mounted to the back of a standard 3 digit LED dispalay to turn it into a volt meter. My bike is not running at the moment so I don't know how noise immune it is, but I'm going to add some filtering regardless. The wires are very thin so be forewarned.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/150961267048?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

I added a low pass filter using a capacitor and resistor to the meter. If you keep the input resistor at 1K and below you can use the trim pot at the back to adjust the voltage. I used 1K ohms and 64 uF at 50V which is what I had in the cabinet. The input resistance of the meter was 65K ohms so 650 ohms is about a 1/100 of full scale (30 V) which would be about 0.3 Volts.

After the adjustment, the device tracks my Fluke 75 pretty well below 10 volts where I get 0.01V of resolution on both. Probably within 0.05V below 10V but it will depend on your adjustment and the resistor you choose if you can get it exact. At 500 Ohms it is within the adjustment range of the pot.

Be very careful when making the adjustment. I shorted out my first meter doing the adjust in a confined space. Another $1.50 down the drain.

[posplayr]

This is a pretty nice unit if you have the room. It appears sealed and very accurate from 12- 15 volts. At 17V it is about 0.3V off but you should not be there anyway.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/231551472073?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

[DimitriT]

The smallest Voltmeter I was able to find was this unit. It is about 1.44 inches across and 1 inch deep.

http://amzn.com/B00LUMIQJO

This worked out for my GS550L which has no room around the instrument cluster. I fabricated a bracket out of 1/8 inch aluminum so I could mount it to the bar clamp bolt:







I also used a small relay to give it switched current from the battery:

http://amzn.com/B000CJ05WW

This gives me battery voltage without worrying that the meter will drain it.

[Dogma]

Nice little unit. I might have used that, if I had found it 4 years ago.

[posplayr]

Nice little unit. I might have used that, if I had found it 4 years ago.

There are a lot more options now. I'm in the process of dropping my pods in favor of LED displays in the dash (Volts and Pressure). The 3 digit LED displays fit in place of an idiot light.

[LarryJ]

Dimitri, that is one cool little voltmeter! I'm ordering one to put on my 1100GK! I can mount it right on one of the fairing dash panels! Thanks!

[Gorminrider]

Recently Mine indicated a lower-than-I'm-used-to-seeing voltage so I checked out the system and discovered a badly crimped connector. The covering was just beginning to melt...
There were no symptoms running the bike, but it was surely on it's way to failure without this 2$ instrument.

[Dogma]

Nice! Money well spent.

[SVSooke]

That unit DimitriT has is the front of the unit Grimly linked to earlier.Looked on eBay for one and ordered one for the 78 1000.

[IMG]http://i573.photobucket.com/albums/ss171/sersooke/GS1000pics/002_zpsbayaovvi.jpg[/IMG]
Here it is mounted.I used the spare brown wire for parking light.Means it only comes on if I turn the lights on though.Really need to do something like that rely for it.

[hannibal]

Looks good; I know I spent a lot of time figuring out how to mount my gauges. Especially with a fairing the whole thing is a real tricky fit.

Boost gauge?!

[posplayr]

Boost is the only 15 psi 270 sweep mechanical VDO in black gauge i Could find. Under hard acceleration it will peg.

[Grimly]

That unit DimitriT has is the front of the unit Grimly linked to earlier.Looked on eBay for one and ordered one for the 78 1000.

[IMG]http://i573.photobucket.com/albums/ss171/sersooke/GS1000pics/002_zpsbayaovvi.jpg[/IMG]
Here it is mounted.I used the spare brown wire for parking light.Means it only comes on if I turn the lights on though.Really need to do something like that rely for it.

Mine arrived just a couple of days ago, after six weeks in the post. HK Post is so unpredictable nowadays, whereas it used to be considerably quicker than stuff from mainland China. Ironically, in the same period I had stuff arrive from Shengzhen, Guangdo and other places within a week. Go figure.
Anyway, the guage is a neat little thing and I'll get another couple of them - it's not dead accurate against my bench voltmeter, reading under by 0.3V, but as long as it remains consistent, that'll do. It's only an indicator, not a lab gauge.
Oddly, it came with a 20A fuse in line - must have been what was available at the time.