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The electronic tach on my 1982 Katana "worked" very poorly. It would sometimes move, sometimes not, sometimes stick in one spot, but never move higher than 4000RPM and always erratically. So I disassembled it and tried some of the solutions found on this forum. I lubed the mechanism, which took care of the sticking issues. I also replaced the 2 suspect capacitors with new. Unfortunately there was no change in the movement, other than the sticking was gone.
I had the gauges from a 1993 GSXR 750 from an eBay purchase. I bought them solely for the gauge needles, which are a match for the Katana. I thought I would try something and, as it turns out, the tachometer guts from the GSXR work well when connected to the Katana. Of course, the unit was larger and a different shape than the Kat's, and the face plate holes didn't line up, but I went ahead and tried to Macgyver it anyway. I ended up drilling and tapping two small holes in the plastic housing that holds all the electronic bits together. This worked well - I was able to mount the Kat's gauge face plate solid and square. The next problem was that the whole assembly was too deep to fit in the Kat's gauge cluster housing, so I had to disassemble the GSXR unit, separate the circuit board from the rest of the housing and lay it flat under the other half of the unit. I covered it with a large piece of shrink wrap to prevent and stray short circuits. This worked well and everything fits.
This morning I installed everything back onto the bike and fired it up. The tach operates smoothly, moving like it should. I then hooked up my electronic tach to check the accuracy of the GSXR tach. It's off by 700-800RPM (reads high). This was not unexpected because the tach would have been calibrated to the face plate of the GSXR, which most likely had a larger range than the Kat. I can live with this for now, but there was a small potentiometer-like device on the back of the tach circuit board. Could this be used to adjust the ratio? I'll find out, but that's a job for another day. For now, I finally have a tach that "works" - I can do the math.
My tripmeter was also not working so I replaced the dials with those from the salvaged GSXR gauges. It now works perfectly.
All in all, a good day and a cheap solution to repair the tach - the whole gauge cluster cost only about $30.
I had the gauges from a 1993 GSXR 750 from an eBay purchase. I bought them solely for the gauge needles, which are a match for the Katana. I thought I would try something and, as it turns out, the tachometer guts from the GSXR work well when connected to the Katana. Of course, the unit was larger and a different shape than the Kat's, and the face plate holes didn't line up, but I went ahead and tried to Macgyver it anyway. I ended up drilling and tapping two small holes in the plastic housing that holds all the electronic bits together. This worked well - I was able to mount the Kat's gauge face plate solid and square. The next problem was that the whole assembly was too deep to fit in the Kat's gauge cluster housing, so I had to disassemble the GSXR unit, separate the circuit board from the rest of the housing and lay it flat under the other half of the unit. I covered it with a large piece of shrink wrap to prevent and stray short circuits. This worked well and everything fits.
This morning I installed everything back onto the bike and fired it up. The tach operates smoothly, moving like it should. I then hooked up my electronic tach to check the accuracy of the GSXR tach. It's off by 700-800RPM (reads high). This was not unexpected because the tach would have been calibrated to the face plate of the GSXR, which most likely had a larger range than the Kat. I can live with this for now, but there was a small potentiometer-like device on the back of the tach circuit board. Could this be used to adjust the ratio? I'll find out, but that's a job for another day. For now, I finally have a tach that "works" - I can do the math.
My tripmeter was also not working so I replaced the dials with those from the salvaged GSXR gauges. It now works perfectly.
All in all, a good day and a cheap solution to repair the tach - the whole gauge cluster cost only about $30.
