Instrument Panel wierdness
 

HI all...new to this forum....so thanks for having me in :-)

I have a CBR 600 F4 (year 2000) that I bought off a college kid a few years ago. Stripped down to engine and frame a rebuilt it as he'd ragged it pretty bad.

Anyway, all is great with the bike, but I recently purchased a new (used from EBay) instrument panel, as the original had a coupla things not working that replacing bulbs, etc. wouldn't fix. It has similar mileage to the original, and the seller said that it had been tested and was in working order. I plugged the new one into the connector and powered up, however the speedo jumped to 30 mph sitting still and RPM sits about 4K with engine idling as normal (approx 1250-1500rom).

Has anyone ever experienced anything similar, and/or does anyone know what the fix might be?

Many thanks in anticipation, Paddy.

By any chance do you know if the gauge faces were changed out? To do so, usually have to pull the panel apart and pull the needles off.... maybe the needles were not installed correctly during reassembly?

I think I'd be jumping on that ebay return policy and try again with a different seller. I've been duped on ebay a couple times by sellers that guarantee their item is in working order when, in fact, it's a broken piece of crap that should have just went in the scrap pile.

Hi scottscar54. Thank you for your reply. And yes, I actually did change out the faces myself before installing the new unit with some white ones that I like the look of better than the OEM. I have had my old clocks apart before when I was originally refurbing the bike, but never took the needles off before. When I installed the needles they were all at "0". Everything seemed to be OK, and only when I plugged into the harness and powered the bike on did they register the higher than actual values. No wiring has been changed from stock.
They seem to be (understandably) very fragile mechanisms so I didn't want to force anything while handling them, but do you know if it's possible to somehow maybe position the needles with enough "tension" against the "0" stop posts so that they aren't truly zeroed even if they appear to be? Does that make sense?
Many thanks, Paddy.

I had an identical problem when I did the faces on a 2006 Suzuki Katana. Even though the needles were at 0 when I reinstalled them, the minute they were plugged in, they jumped and I had to fine tune the needles to be truly at 0 when the bike was off. In fact, there ended up being some tension on the needles when they hit the needle stops for them to work right. Since then, when doing faceplate swaps, has been something I pay close attention to and in fact, all the bikes I have done the faceplates on have had to have some tension on the needle as they rest on the needle stops... they were actually pushing against needle stops lightly.

Are these gauges analog or digital? I had this issue on my f3 analog gauges. I troubleshot it to death and back. Like you, I had dissembled everything. Upon reassembly I had inadvertently put my needles on incorrectly. My suggestion is to remove them, turn on the key and then put them on at the correct position. I did this and verified my RPM with a bench tach. My MPH is correct also being verified against the Waze and Good Maps apps.

Many thanks scottscar54 and hamlin6. Sounds like what I suspected might be the case. Great idea hamlin6...I'll plug 'em in with the front cover off (clocks and needles exposed) so I can make sure they are truly zeroed with the bike on but not running. They do seem to register the correct progressions when I was riding, i.e. me doing around 30mph was actually registering around 60 on the clock, and idle RPM was registering right around 3,000. I am busy as all get out with work, so might take me a few days to revisit this. I'll check back in to let you know.

Cheers for now all.

Hey all - As expected it took me a while to find time to revisit my needle/gauge issues. As suspected the needles just needed a bit of fine-tuning to register 0 when the ignition is switched on. It's very fiddly to do, and I still need to refine a bit more as I think my RPMs are reading about 200 too high and the speedo is registering around 4mph too fast, but I'm close.

Many thanks for your help and input.