Topic: Any Canadiens familiar with KOSO?

[scondon]

  I stumbled across Koso website showing some pretty cool tach and speedo options but am unable to order direct from the site(took my info and said a representative would be in touch). US dealers that sell their product are 100 miles from me. On Monday I plan to make a few calls to see if I can locate a place to buy what I want. In the meantime, thought I'd ask if anyone had used their product and what they thought of it.

   What I'm looking at is found here(click "motorcycle" and got to p.6 bottom, black GP style mini tach)

http://www.kosonorthamerica.com/index_us.html

[bwaller]

Sean,

As it turns out these people are an hour from me. I have never heard of them but will ask a friend who does a lot of snowmobile work if he has. I can drop by and check out their quality if you give me a few days.

[Tim.]

Seem expensive compared to the similar Acewell products.

[scondon]

Sean,

As it turns out these people are an hour from me. I have never heard of them but will ask a friend who does a lot of snowmobile work if he has. I can drop by and check out their quality if you give me a few days.

  Thanks Brent, that would be wicked cool. No rush

Seem expensive compared to the similar Acewell products.

    Thanks Tintin, I'll research Acewell. The electronic mini tachs I have come across have been silly expensive($200+ range) and the cheap ones($60 and under) are all cable driven. The cable driven one I currently have is very unreliable, it reads 12,500 at the needle when the engine is turning 8,500. Since I have the Dyna 2000 I can put in a electronic tach very easily, the Koso one comes very close to matching my speedo, goes well above 8000rpm that a lot of mini tachs(Harley?) stop at, and has a small shift warning light that can be set at any desired rpm. $115MSRP isn't TOO much for me to drop if it's a good quality piece.

[scondon]

  On Saturdy,when I tried to order the gauge from KOSO online, I was informed that a rep would contact me. Didn't really expect any quick reply. Mark from KOSO called at 8:30am Monday morning. He wanted to make sure that the gauge I wanted would work for my application so he checked with the engineer and called me back promptly. He was afraid that the black face model would be too sensitive and not read properly at high rpm's but guaranteed that the silver face model would(same dimension, features, slight difference internally).

   Anyway, won't be able to give any input on the product until it arrives. But their service so far has been excellent

[bwaller]

Sounds good so far, I should drop by the place sometime anyway and have a look see.

Good luck with it.

[scondon]

Sounds good so far, I should drop by the place sometime anyway and have a look see.

Good luck with it.

   Thanks again for the offer to help, Brent   They sounded like they do a lot of snowmobile and offroad/four track sales. I'm looking forward to trying this out. Mark said that they had tested the black face gauge on the 900CBR, as well as other applications, and that it was fine at low rpm's but too sensitive to be accurate as the revs increased(current?) on the motorcycle. I ordered the silver face for cost+ $8-$12 shipping from Quebec. As long as customs doesn't take too long I should be able to report on the product in a couple weeks.

   Now to find a tach gear plug

[scondon]

    Wired in the new tach last night. This is a pretty nice little unit. MUCH nicer than the little cable driven ones I got cheap. Well manufactured right down to the rubber mounting cushes with plastic inserts to quell vibration

    It has a small shift light and records highest rpm attained. Can be programed to run with a multitude of different ignition set-ups(even points, if I'm not mistaken). It's well lit, background lights blue and needle lights red, and sweeps pretty steady.

    It does have four wires that need connecting, 12v switched, ground, ignition pulse, and + terminal on the battery so some wiring skills are needed. Kit comes with a couple different wire connections for ignition hookup and four splice connectors, but no battery terminal connector(fortunately had these on hand).

      Koso was very helpful and got me the tach within a week and a half(Canada to USA). Accurate tach readings, finally

[tsflstb]

That's a nice tach.  I'm glad it's working for you.

Not to hijack, buuutttttt....does anybody know why some of these cheaper tachs won't read at higher RPMs?  I bought one from Summit that tracks perfectly up to 5000 RPM and then just hangs there.
 
http://store.summitracing.com/partdetail.asp?autofilter=1&part=SUM%2DG2870&N=700+400304+115&autoview=sku

Why does it go to 11,000 if it can't read that fast?  I've tried all the different settings but no luck.  I'm still running points...is the electrical pulse too "dirty" to read at the higher speeds?  Is there any kind of simple circuit you can build to correct the problem?

I'm hesitant to spend the money on another nicer tach like this if my problem is in the signal going to the gauge.

[scondon]

  Hijack away, tsflstb. It's a good question and hopefully one of our electrical engineers can shine some light. When I talked to Mark@Koso he told me that the tach I initially wanted would not work at high rpm's. I told him that I had a modern ignition(Dyna 2000) but I got the impression that motorcycles in general, rather than the ignition type, were what caused the faulty read at high rpm's.

   I don't know the "hows" and "why's" of it, but I took his word for it and got the one he suggested. Roads are wet here so I'm not wanting to test the limit, however I did get it up to 8000rpm tonight just to see the shift light come on

   Just to add, I checked the instructions again and they only show connections from pickups or ignition box so not sure if points/condensor ignition will work or not. They do make a point of saying that it needs a "good" ground so you might try grounding yours directly to engine or frame,tsflstb.

[FunJimmy]

Scondon

What/how did you mount the new tach?
Did it come with a finished housing/case?
Could you post a few pictures?

Thanks
FJ

[Jerry Rxman Griffin aka MuthaF'er]

Sean,

Tach plugs on EBay Buy It Now.

[bistromath]

I'm an EE so I'll take a stab at it

There are two things I can think of that would cause a fully electronic tach to read low above a certain RPM:

* Aliasing: The tach can only read up to half its sampling frequency. I don't think this is the case because a) it's trivial to sample a signal above 5000RPM, and b) it would alias (above 5000RPM it would start again at zero and work its way up)

* Filtering: The tach is internally filtered to improve signal quality (maybe to compensate for poor distributor pickups), and the filter cutoff frequency is low enough that the tach will not show RPMs above a certain limit. Signal quality and bandwidth (RPM range) are always a tradeoff. This is to me the most likely reason.

The signal coming out of the Dyna unit is probably a really good square wave, which should pretty much negate the need for any filtering at all. But it's probably still included in the tach.

[bistromath]

Sorry tsflstb, I didn't fully answer your question.

My guess is it's a signal integrity issue, and that the signal coming off your points isn't good enough for the tach to understand. Does filing your points make a difference? How about a fully-charged battery? Stronger points springs?

I'd have to get an oscilloscope on the points signal to really tell you why yours stops reading at 5K. It should be possible to build a reasonable filter to condition the signal into a nice square wave but without seeing the signal I can't tell you what it would look like.

[tsflstb]

Thanks for the help bistro.  I admire those like you that study the black arts.

I'll try doing a good tune-up on the points and see what happens.

Is it possible to sacrifice the low RPM response in favor of the range above 5K?  We're really just interested in approaching redline.  Is there some kind of high-pass filter that could be used?

How about using some Radio-Shack components and a series of LEDs to pick up at 7K, 8K, 9K, and 10K RPM?  I guess it all hinges on that incoming signal being clean huh?

[scondon]

Sean,

Tach plugs on EBay Buy It Now.

  Are ya talkin' about the chrome one from Cycle-X? That's the one I got (95 cents cheaper if ordered direct). It's a bit of a sloppy fit in the hole, but sloppy enough to fit a o-ring around it for a snug fit and tight seal(hopefully). Not talking about the groove that the screw passes through, talkin' about the main cylindrical body. Maybe it's intended that way.

Scondon

What/how did you mount the new tach?
Did it come with a finished housing/case?
Could you post a few pictures?

Thanks
FJ

 Tach came with everything needed to mount to handle bars and a seperate bracket to hold the gauge. I've gotten rid of the stock gauge bracket so used the bracket mounting hole on the triple tree as a place to mount mine.

  How could I forget to post a pic of it, silly me. I'll see if I can get one on tonight

[Jerry Rxman Griffin aka MuthaF'er]

Sean,

There is a guy that lists these frequently on EBay. About $10. Not CycleX. I couldn't find it but I'll forward the info when I see it.

[scondon]

Sean,

There is a guy that lists these frequently on EBay. About $10. Not CycleX. I couldn't find it but I'll forward the info when I see it.

    , Thanks Rxman. The chrome plug I got also gets a lot hotter than the aluminum cover so may want to swap it in the future. I bought the first one I could find in order to get the tach mounted ASAP

[scondon]

  Here's a couple pics of the gauge mounted. The "V" shaped bracket that mounts to the Triple tree has rubber bushes that don't show in the pic. Also, there is a rubber lined circular clip for mounting to the bars(not shown).

 Tried to get a good shot of it lit up. It is much easier to read than the pic shows.