VFR800 Gear Indicator

[Guest carla]

This applies to Honda VFR800 1998 - 2005 models, the the principles apply to all bikes.

Fitted a gear indicator to my wife's Ninja 250r and decided I liked it, and to fit one to the VFR. Instructions are hard to find, so here goes.

Selecting the Indicator

Looking around I found two options: Acumen and HealTech. Watching a few youTubes of the Acumen I decided it was too slow to indicate on the up change.

Looked at the HealTech, the reports were much better about the time to indicate, and my wife's 250R indicats in less that a second, even though it uses a wheel sensor ( You can read about it here...)

So what you need is a HealTech GIpro-X (the indicator) and a GPX-H01 the harness wiring.

The units work by comparing speed to revs. Speed is picked up off the gearbox speed sensor which provides a signal to the speedo, revs are picked up from the tacho signal.

I bought mine from StreetfighterAU , Aus$159.60 delivered.

HealTech also has the advantage that it is a plug in addition, which means you can take it off and fit it to another bike.

Connecting to the Speedo & Techo

The wiring harness comes with a male and female plug to intercept the speedo signal, plus a single wire to be spliced into the tacho signal.

First job is to find the speedo connector. Take of the left faring, and the radiator expansion bottle. The sensor is located behind the bottle.

Unplug the connector and connect in the GPX-H01 wiring harness.

Next is the connection to get the tacho signal, which is picked up at the ECU. On my '99 model it is in the tail of the bike. I ran the single cable from the speedo connector to the rear of the bike following the wiring harness.

The ECU is tucked under a cover in the tail of the bike.

The only thing holding it in place is the cover, and it can easily be pulled out.

Remove the tape from the first part of the harness and pull out the yellow wire with the green stripe. This is the signal to the tacho.

Use the supplied splicer to splice the GPX-H01 tacho signal wire (black with a green stripe) to the tacho signal wire. I used a few cable ties to pull the wiring harness back together.

You are now wired. The remaining task is to run the harness wire from the speedo signal connector to the front of the bike, the indicator has the matching plug. I ran the cable along the wiring harness to the inside of the front faring past the ignition coils and plugged it into the indicator harness inside the front fairing where there is plenty of room. You are now wired.

Fitting the Indicator

The remaining task is to run the harness wire from the speedo signal connector to the front of the bike, the indicator has the matching plug. I ran the cable along the wiring harness to the inside of the front faring adjacent the ignition coils and plugged it into the indicator harness inside the faring where there is plenty of room.

Initially I mounted my indicator on the steering head, just below the ignition key. It is supplied with double sided tape which makes the that easy.

One ride and I decided that this idea was crap. So I mounted it up inside the fairing.

I've got a MRA double bubble screen, the lower section up the instrument panel is painted black, which hides the indicator, and provides some shading to assist visibility. More important, the bubble gives you some additional height above the instruments.

So first I made up a small bracket out of an old flood light, it was the perfect width, slightly smaller than the indicator.

Also notched the fairing with an 8mm hole to allow the cable to feed in behind the panel.

Cable length is about perfect, allowing for slack inside the front cowl.

Here is the finished product mounted. Lip on the fairing hides the cable coming out of the bottom of the indicator.

Calibration

The remaining task is calibration, which you can do on the centre stand.

When you turn on the ignition the display will count down to 1 and then display “L”. Start the bike and after a few seconds it will flash “1”. It is ready to start learning,

Put it into first gear, let the clutch out and accelerate to about 3,000rpm and wait for the display to flash “n”, change up and repeat all the way to 6 gear. Units is calibrated. You will find that changing up and down it will pick up the correct gear and display in under a second.

As an aside the unit has a function to flash the gear number to indicate a high speed warning. It is set by holding the RPM at about 4 times idle for 5 seconds. Pretty easy to do accidentally if you leave it idle on choke. It is cancelled by holding the idle at around 4-5k until the unit flashes, then kill the ignition.

I'll post a video of the unit working so that you can see how fast it reacts to gear changes.

[NorthernVFRDave]

Cool, thanks for the info, I've been thinking about adding one, for a while now.

[AnikMankar]

I am waiting for mine. Does this also have a Shift light / gear light indicator ?

[Guest baldyjoe]

if u go to the accum web site it has the wiring connections for the bike and all the connections are in the instrument panel did mine all up the front including volt meter

[Guest 82ndGreasemonkey]

Yep- I've got the Accumen on my bike, & you're right- slow as hell. Sometimes if you're holding the clutch in it won't give a reading, & even worst- occasionally it confuses 2nd & 5th... (WTF right!?).

Previous owner did a nice install though...

[AnikMankar]

fitted mine here