Fitting Acumen shift light to R1100S - help with Tacho wire

[masha]

After fitting the optional Acumen sensor and wheel magnets on the rear wheel - I've come to the conclusion that my DG8 main unit is faulty. Reason being it exhibits exactly the same problem when wired to the Acumen sender. Pretty frustrating after experimenting with it for the last couple of days. Even on the external sensor my unit will not get beyond '1' on the programing sequence. I think my next course of action might be to return the unit to Acumen for testing, which is a bit frustrating as it means dismantling the bike again after wiring it all up neatly. I will keep you all posted and hope to confirm the correct wiring on the R1100S on this forum eventually. Matthew

[masha]

if anyone wants to mail me direct at m.stears@canterbury.ac.uk I will send you the wiring diagram and test sent from Acumen earlier to try.

[masha]

FINALLY - got it working (with a little help from the optional Acumen sender and modding the mounting backet and magnets (which are very close to the rear caliper!). I will watch this space and report back if Acumen come back with anything definative on fitting these Gear Indicators without the need for the sender.

[r550s]

phew, well done! - which wire did you use for the tacho (acumen brown wire) - if you used the bmw pin 16 black wire, then it's one less wire for me to check...

[r550s]

spurred on by masha's success... the DGV will now learn as far as 5th gear - which I think means that the wiring is okay (using the OE speed sensor) but it just seems to take forever to learn on the paddock stand. Acumen advice is to take it out on the road and give it a 'proper lesson' (which echoes previous advice from this forum, thanks.) God I am getting bored with this thread, apologies everybody.

[Red Fokker]

Have we got any firm conclusions on this or is the general concensus that you just have to rev the bejesus out of the bike to ensure the digital thing learns.

On the plus side Chris, if you've got it showing five gears correctly then you must be in sixth if it shows sometyhing different!

[Blackal]

I went for the slightly dearer plug'n'play version for my R-1 (prob not available for the R1100s).

I needed it cos I always thought I was in 5th when I was in 6th...........

Other than for that - it's merely bling

Al

[r550s]

yep, got it working okay finally, just couldn't face this thread anymore! For anyone who's still awake, the signal from the OE sender (on my 99 non-abs) is a measly 500mVac at full chat. This is pathetic for an inductive sensor (which could give at least 5Vac peak to peak if it tried), but it seems to drive the OE speedo okay. Whether or not other bikes are similar is anyone's guess, but it could be an old/dodgy sensor, poor manufacturing tolerances, or even good old crud. It could even be the way it was designed. Anyroadup, not to worry because the OE speedo conveniently has a nice amplified output, which is used by the 'smart' turn signal relay to calculate distance/speed etc. The acumen DGV loves this signal.
And... the OE tacho signal, which comes from the motronic & is also used to trigger the coils, is as mad as a mad thing - the spark timing is all over the place, really all over the place. This doesn't affect the OE tacho, which works on a charge-pump principle, but the pulse-by-pulse frequency (which is what the acumen reads) is anything from 30 to 120HZ....on tickover!
Anyroadup, not to worry (again) because the signal output from the crankshaft hall sensor is as steady as a steady thing - and the acumen DGV loves it too.
The final wiring is as follows:
-connected at the blue-colured 18-way connector for the OE instruments in the front RH relay box:
Acumen Orange (speedo): BMW pin 17 blue with green
Acumen Green (Neutral): BMW pin 7 brown with purple
Acumen Red (ign 12v): BMW pin 5 green with black
Acumen Purple (perm 12v): BMW pin 18 red with white
Acumen black (0v): BMW pin 15 brown

Acumen brown (tacho): BMW black wire traced from the crankshaft sensor to the motronic multipin - got to take the tank off, bugger.

Wired like this, the acumen took less than 2 minutes to learn all six on the paddock stand, but I still got done off my neighbour for making a noise late at night. Now I'm going to go and pull my eyeballs out and play conkers, where's me shoelaces?
[/i]

[r550s]

it's bling.

[Red Fokker]

... I quite like this kind of bling.

[masha]

Well done indeed - I bit the bullet and used Acumen's external sensor/sender on the rear wheel in the end, but next time I've got the fairing/tank and instruments off I will try your wiring advice - thanks for your input (and I know what you mean about the neigbours - mine was running in the shed at 80mph on the paddock stand while I set it up and much frustrating heat and noise while I experimented with the wiring, and finally gave up and used the external sender - still quite a near install though so happy for now).

regards, well done and ride-on

Matt

[Red Fokker]

You'll both be getting ASBO's next...!

[masha]

Mine's not that loud yet, it still has the catalyst fitted until the end of may when I hope to fit my decat. Y-Piece (so neighbours should think themselves lucky at the moment, although it rarely gets started up in the shed/garden).

[masha]

OKAY - sorry in advance but time to reopen pandora's box with this thread..... as I didn't get a reponse to another thread on the Hall Sensor wiring.... some time has passed and I have acquired a 2nd BoxerCup bike and am setting one up for touring and one urm, "standard + carbon" for cafe racing (probably the best way to describe it).

So I have an Acumen to fit - its all connected according to the above but I've got the following to complete the install, and looking for some pointers on the location of the Hall Sensor Output wire under the tank:

hallsensoroutput.jpg (81.77 KiB) Viewed 7305 times

[r550s]

There are two Hall sensors, mounted on a single backplate as one Hall sensor 'unit'. Each one feeds a signal to the Motronic, and either will do for the Acumen. The Hall sensor unit is located at the front of the engine (sorry if you know this) behind the black plastic cover. The cable from it runs up over the top of the engine to a 5 pin plug connector, which then continues in a cable which joins the big plug into the Motronic control unit.
The cable is actually 4-core, plus an earth screen. The 5 pin plug for the Hall sensor unit is as follows: Pin 1 - earth screen / Pin 2 black SIGNAL WIRE (goes to pin 30 on the big Motronic plug / Pin 3 - brown 0 volts / Pin 4 red 12 volt supply from Motronic to the Hall sensors / Pin 5 orange SIGNAL WIRE (goes to Pin 31 on the big Motronic plug).
You can tap into either of the two signal wires. I did it inside the big Motronic plug - just look for a black wire on pin 30, next to an orange wire on pin 31. The pin numbers are moulded into the plug. They are tiny, but they are there.

It's an old thread this. I sacked my Acumen (DGV digital gear/voltage indicator) after it turned out to be the culprit in destroying four batteries. Turns out the Acumen was badly designed and used way too much current to store its memory when the bike was switched off. A technical chap at Acumen admitted this to me - I was really pissed off about my long-running mystery battery problem - having to bump start the bike after being parked for a few days.

I ended up building a digital gear indicator using instructions from some genius who installed it in place of the neutral light - it works great.