Suzuki GSX 1400
- Gear
Position
indicator
This page details the Gear Position Indicator I have
made for my GSX. I know that many say 'what do you need one
for?' and 'well if you don't know what gear you're in...'
blah blah blah..... I've heard it all..... BUT I for one
used to often find that on motorways, I'd be trying to stick the bike in
7th. She has so much torque available that when accelerating in
6th, I often thought there must be another gear so I set to fitting an
indicator.
I had
initially looked at commercially available items - such as the Acumen or
similar type units and whilst I like the look of them, I did not really
want another 'bolt on' - I like the retro naked and uncluttered look of
the standard clocks. Then, when I was converting the backlighting
to BLUE I realised that it would be possible to place LEDs behind the
marker positions on the tacho, so that the numbers 1 - 6 would light up
when the appropriate gear was selected. I jury rigged a test
piece and it looked good, so went on to develop a gear position indicator
that shows both the selected gear, plus also when the bike has its kill
switch activated. It is microprocessor controlled and uses the
Suzuki's gear position sensor output so there are none of the confused
results you sometimes get with speed/rpm based units. Upon switch
on, the 6 LEDs illuminate in sequence with the pointers doing their
sweep test and both the kill position warning patterns and the indicated
gear marker brilliance are user programmable from the standard 'Reset'
button on the clocks. |