Fitting Acumen shift light to R1100S - help with Tacho wire

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masha
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Postby masha » Sun Dec 30, 2007 2:11 pm

Yes, good point, but that was running the bike on its padock stand with wheel spinning in all gears. I'm just going to remove the binacle again to check my colour chart and connections again.
Matt Masha
'04 R1100S BoxerCup (and other bikes by Honda, Ducati and KTM)

r550s
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Postby r550s » Sun Dec 30, 2007 2:11 pm

just to confirm - the acumen black wire does connect to the BMW brown wire on pin 15 - but it is 0v (not 12v)
Your wiring looks right to me. Re. the programming, I managed to program as far as 4th gear and then it seemed to stop 'learning'. The bike was getting too hot on the stand so I've left it until I go out on a clear road.
Meanwhile, I've googled around with acumen and, sad to say, it seems that this sort of problen isn't uncommon. OTOH acumen seem quite helpful. It seems that 'dirty' signals (from the speedo or tacho) could be to blame - but we should have avoided as much of that as possible by not taking the signal from e.g. the coil. As a starter, try checking the voltage that you're supplying to the DG8 (acumen black & red wires) - I found a bit of a bad connection elsewhere in my 1999 loom...
Until I try and program it on the road, I'm wondering if the tendency of the drivetrain to 'jump' when running it in gear on the paddock stand, is messing with the rear wheel speed enough to dissatisfy the acumen. Onwards and upwards eh?
'Hinterachsge' translates as 'rear axle'.(Not 'Differential', so f*** off)

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Postby r550s » Sun Dec 30, 2007 2:29 pm

...other points are...the suggestion to tap into the back of the instrument binnacle looks good - the closer that the tap is to the OE instruments, the cleaner the signal should be. Also, a dirty or iffy speedo sensor/signal wouldn't neccessarily be bad enought to affect the bike's analogue speedo, but it could mess up a digital signal enough to confuse the more precise rate-counter in the acumen.
'Hinterachsge' translates as 'rear axle'.(Not 'Differential', so f*** off)

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masha
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Postby masha » Sun Dec 30, 2007 3:43 pm

Nope - all were wired correctly (after re-checking everything just now) - I've decided to try it with the external acumen wired rear wheel sender seeing as I've got the kit in an effort to get it working so I can reassemble the bike (until the next time when I've heard back from Acumen in the new year. I will keep you all posted though.

M
Matt Masha
'04 R1100S BoxerCup (and other bikes by Honda, Ducati and KTM)

r550s
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Postby r550s » Sun Dec 30, 2007 4:44 pm

had another go at programming on the paddock stand - cleaned the speedo sensor etc. It learns as far as a flashing '3' (which means it's trying to learn 3rd gear I think) but then it won't progress any further. My guess is a dirty signal from the speedo sensor. FWIW the OE speedo sender is 6 pulses per wheel revolution.
'Hinterachsge' translates as 'rear axle'.(Not 'Differential', so f*** off)

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masha
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Postby masha » Sun Dec 30, 2007 6:10 pm

That's further than I got - didn't get beyond 1 in 'learn' mode. As I had the optional Acumen sender I mounted it on the rear wheel and am in the process of fitting the magnets to the rear disc allen bolts. As it was only 3 wires extra to connect I thought that was the next thing to try - will try it out tomorrow and report back, fingers crossed.
Matthew
Matt Masha
'04 R1100S BoxerCup (and other bikes by Honda, Ducati and KTM)

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throttlemeister
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Postby throttlemeister » Sun Dec 30, 2007 7:25 pm

r550s wrote:had another go at programming on the paddock stand - cleaned the speedo sensor etc. It learns as far as a flashing '3' (which means it's trying to learn 3rd gear I think) but then it won't progress any further. My guess is a dirty signal from the speedo sensor. FWIW the OE speedo sender is 6 pulses per wheel revolution.

You could try to switch to Neutral before going to the next gear.
Gijs

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Postby r550s » Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:49 pm

...maybe, but it does the neutral thing okay - it displays '0' when it's in neutral. I've had a look at the acumen site and there's 3 things that might be relevant: first, they suggest swapping the orange & brown (acumen) wires - this means swapping over the speedo & tacho inputs. Shows you how simple the thing is - it just learns the comparative rate between two inputs and stores the result as '2nd' or whatever. Second thing to note is that in the bike-specific advice, it recomends that (for fitment to a BMW R1150R) the acumen 'tachometer' (brown) wire should connect to the signal wire that runs from the crank sensor to the motronic. This is preferred over the 'back-of-the-instruments' (i.e. black signal wire from the motronic to the tachometer) option. Makes you wonder if there's something about the BMW tachometer signal that the acumen doesn't like - seeing as the general guidance otherwise is to tap in to everything at the instruments.... Anyroadup, on tuesday I will take the acumen brown wire off the instruments and join it to the signal wire from the hall sensor. The slightly worrying thing about this is that, according to acumen, it prefers one of the two hall sensors (pin 5 on the hall sensor connector) over the other (pin 2) hmmm.
The third thing is that they recommend using the BMW 'blue' wire (no other info!) for the speedo input. It's not 100% covered in the Haynes wiring diagrams, but the 'blue' wire seems to be a signal output from the speedo to the turn signal relay (which counts speedo sensor pulses in order to work out when to turn the indicators off) Again, this seems to be preferred over the (yellow) signal wire that goes direct from the bevel box sensor to the speedometer. FYI this blue wire is pin 17 on the instruments connector - maybe I'll try putting the acumen speedo (orange) wire onto that before I go looking under the tank for the crankshaft sensor..
It's handy that you're going the other route and looking at the speedo sensor itself, keep posting.
Last edited by r550s on Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
'Hinterachsge' translates as 'rear axle'.(Not 'Differential', so f*** off)

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Postby r550s » Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:51 pm

...maybe I'll just make the effort to start remembering what gear I'm in!
'Hinterachsge' translates as 'rear axle'.(Not 'Differential', so f*** off)

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iandunn1100ss
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Postby iandunn1100ss » Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:54 pm

I have set up these on my 2 aprilias and daytona and cbr,make a point of going in to neutral and change gear slowly and also the higher gears need alot more rev`s to get it to learn them. i saw 110 mph on the speedo in 6th on my rsv on the paddock stand :shock:
ian
Bmw r1100s 02 frost blue,bmw r1100s 03 blue,Yamaha tmax500 03 silver
Honda fireblade rrx 98 orange and bronze,aprilia rs250 01 black and red,aprilia rsv milie 99 black and silver

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Postby r550s » Sun Dec 30, 2007 10:03 pm

thanks for that, I've an excuse to take it out and redline it in third - learn now you b****rd!
'Hinterachsge' translates as 'rear axle'.(Not 'Differential', so f*** off)

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Postby r550s » Mon Dec 31, 2007 8:54 am

copy of email to acument this morning:

Hi, have tapped into all the wires I need (soldered connections) at the multipin connector for the OE instruments. Haynes manual seems fairly accurate in this area. Learning process goes fine until display of flashing '3' (trying to 'learn' 3rd gear). Sometimes the '3' flashes rapidly, but it never manages three bars - just returns to a steady flash. Have cleaned speedo sensor (6 pulses per wheel rev.) & tried different revs etc, no progress. FYI the voltmeter reads '14.4' with engine running. The permanent and the ignition-on 12 volts, and the 0v are all good.
Have checked your website & the model-specific info (for a BMW R1150R, which is a sister bike) recommends connection of the 'tacho' brown wire into the signal wire from the crankshaft hall sensor to the motronic. Is this preferred over the 'back-of-the-instruments' option that I've used? (which is actually the signal wire output from the motronic to the bike's tachometer & coil also). Similarly, the recommendation (for the R1150R) is to connect the 'speedo' orange wire into the BMW 'blue' (no other info) wire. The only likely blue wire that I can find is an output signal from the speedometer to the bike's turn signal relay - this wire probably feeds a signal (i.e. a speedometer pulse) that helps the turn signal relay to calculate speed/distance (it turns off the indicators automatically). Again, this seems to be preferred over the signal wire from the speedo pickup to the speedometer (which I've used).
I've no problem trying different methods (it will eventually work!) but I wondered if you had any more guidance/info? We have a good forum for these bikes and another rider is having similar problems with a DG8.
Many thanks
Chris 0795 080 2793 (m)
please reply to chris.whitton@talktalk.net
'Hinterachsge' translates as 'rear axle'.(Not 'Differential', so f*** off)

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masha
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Postby masha » Mon Dec 31, 2007 1:32 pm

I got the following back from Acumen this morning - see that last bit as it might explain why yours is only learning 1 and 2. I see you have the volv meter too on yours then - that is a nice unit that one, handy to keep an eye on the battery condition. I've just fitted an isolator switch to the battery on mine so I can shut disconnect the battery completely when in storage over long periods of bad weather.

"Hi Matthew,

We're closed at the moment but I'm giving email support. I've checked the BMW wiring diagrams I have with me, and a R1100S tacho wire is, according to my info, Yellow - as per the screen shot below - but it may depend on what year bike you have, please advise. I'm making an assumption here that the DG8 lights up OK and it "sees" neutral OK - without neutral it will not learn - and also assuming the speedo and tacho are working fine on the bike when you're teaching. Anyway, there's a simple test to see if you're on the right wires. Connect both the DG8 tacho and speedo wires to what you think is, say, the tacho wire and try and program. The DG8 will learn 1st and 2nd and no more (it's learning the same gear ratio and it can't learn the same gear twice, except for 1st and 2nd) IF it's on the tacho wire. If it learns, do the same for the speedo wire (shown below as Red/White).


Let me know how you get on please"
Matt Masha
'04 R1100S BoxerCup (and other bikes by Honda, Ducati and KTM)

r550s
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Postby r550s » Mon Dec 31, 2007 2:09 pm

had a reply from acumen too - suggests doing the learn routine on the road, to avoid backlash in the drive train!
Re. your reply from acumen - interested to know what wiring diagram they are referring to - the only one that I know of is the Haynes version (my BMW manual hasn't got a wiring diagram - must go and check my mate's clymer) On the Haynes diagram, it shows something in the instruments labelled as 'tacho' (with a yellow wire going to it) but it's connected to the speedo sensor! The (real?) tachometer wire is elsewhere on the Haynes diagram - it's black & it comes from the motronic!
The business about connecting both acumen tacho & speedo wires to the tacho (or speedo) - do I take it that it's just a means of hunting down wires (e.g the tacho and speede sensor inputs) that have a pulsed signal?
'Hinterachsge' translates as 'rear axle'.(Not 'Differential', so f*** off)

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Red Fokker
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Postby Red Fokker » Mon Dec 31, 2007 3:54 pm

...well I've been reading this and now I'm really confused. If either of you ever get to the bottom of this it may be worth a definitive posting / 'sticky' because I'm sure a lot of other people would be interested in fitting one of these. Personally I'll just buy you another tin of biscuits Chris and let you sort it :D


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