Temp Gauge and USB Mounts

I’ve been wanting to add an oil temperature gauge and a USB receptacle to my bike. Here are a couple of photos of the preliminary work on the project. The fork tube clamps are from an ebay vendor, RZMPARTS, and are about $9 and $12 US each for the 31 and 53mm sizes. The temp gauge and the USB port are about 28 and 29mm respectively, hence the bit of industrial heat shrink tubing to take up the gap. (A bit of gasket material, inner tube, or o-rings would also work.) I should be able to position the 53mm clamps on the upper fork tubes, either above or below the top triple clamp. I still have to decide whether to drill the larger or the smaller clamp to allow the 8mm fastener the clearance for proper clamping of the mating part.

The Blue Sea Systems 1741 temperature gauge is compact and can display either in C or F by simply changing the power lead polarity. I’m trying out their 1821 sensor but may opt for a more compact NTC thermistor later on. I’m also looking at how to incorporate a couple of Ram B-sized (1 inch) mounting balls to accommodate a cellphone/GPS mounting arm with the same setup.


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they look pretty sharp
What is your plan for weatherproofing the connections on the back of the devices?

Chris W wrote:

they look pretty sharp
What is your plan for weatherproofing the connections on the back of the devices?

The two quick-disconnect connections on the USB unit are easy enough to do with heat shrink tubing or with self-sealing crimp lugs. For the temperature gauge I plan to use two different sizes of heat shrink tubing. First I'll use a smaller size to seal from the connector to the lead wires and then a larger size to cover the back of the meter body and down over the smaller heat shrink and the connector. As the wiring bundle will be fairly small at about 5-6mm diameter it won't be possible to find heat shrink tubing to go all the way from 28mm to 5mm in one step.

check out Mcmaster Carr - they may have a one piece solution for you. there are straight and 90 deg options
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[quote="Chris W"]check out Mcmaster Carr - they may have a one piece solution for you. there are straight and 90 deg options
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I saw those when I first started planning the project and I have to say the MMC is rather proud of them at $12 each, plus shipping. I looked around a bit for a molded rubber boot of some sort thinking that somebody probable already makes one for another purpose, but no luck so far. It’s not that critical as I have lots of different sizes of heat shrink around and quite honestly a $5 bicycle inner tube and a few cable ties would get the job done with material for another 20+ of them to spare.

Thanks for posting this. I've been looking to mount some USB chargers at the bars, but couldn't find anything that didn't look like some cheesy RV setup.

I like how those clamps resemble connecting rods  [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Let us know how the oil temp gauge looks in broad daylight with dark sunglasses or visor.
I put an LED voltage gauge on my V11 lemans and can't see it worth a damn in daylight.

Where and how are you going to mount the temperature sensor ?

That seemed to be an issue when I looked into fitting a trailtech unit.

I eventually decided to fit an oil thermostat which will keep the oil temperature up in cold weather
so there's no need to momitor it.

not-fishing wrote:

Let us know how the oil temp gauge looks in broad daylight with dark sunglasses or visor.
I put an LED voltage gauge on my V11 lemans and can't see it worth a damn in daylight.

I’ll do that once I have it up and running. The 1741 sensor was dead on arrival and Blue Sea Systems is sending me a new one.

evansnows wrote:

Where and how are you going to mount the temperature sensor ?

That seemed to be an issue when I looked into fitting a trailtech unit.

I eventually decided to fit an oil thermostat which will keep the oil temperature up in cold weather
so there's no need to momitor it.

The sensor is designed to be strapped to a pipe or mounted via a #8 (4mm) screw. I plan to attach it to the output line of the oil thermostat and wrap it with fiberglass electrical tape. Chances are the response time will be too slow so I’m already looking at using a bonded 10 kilOhm  NTC thermistor, similat to what Beetle did with his.

Looking to knock this out this weekend. I understand that there's a factory GPS harness on the bike, so I figured I'd use that for the USB supply. Before I go rooting, does anyone know where this harness can most likely be found? Is it crammed up behind the headstock somewhere, or am I going to have to fish it out from under the tank?

OldMojo wrote:

Is it crammed up behind the headstock somewhere

Yes.
Found mine accessible from the right side after removing the plastic wing.

Today’s progress of mounting the USB port and the temperature gauge on the bike. With luck I’ll get the wiring installed in a couple days, after a couple parts that I ordered arrive.

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Finished up the wiring today. They live!

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Why a temp gauge? There's one on the display in the dash.

Pete Roper wrote:

Why a temp gauge? There's one on the display in the dash.

Oil temperature…just because.

At least it's metric - which is period correct for GRiSO.

I've put this up here before somewhere, but anyway...this is how I see oil temperature.

I got an engine temperature monitor/alarm kit from ebay along with a thermowell of the correct length, an adapter for the M20 dipstick thread and a few other bits & bobs.

Then I soldered the thermistor to wiring that is made for ovens.
I shoved the thermistor down the thermowell along with a good squeeze of heat paste.

I put in a connector near the left throttle body so I could remove the thermowell when I want to measure the oil level.

Now I can see the actual sump oil temperature.

Can't seem to get the photos to display properly - sorry.
They're vertical when loading but come out at right angles


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Oz1200Guzzi wrote:

At least it's metric - which is period correct for GRiSO.

It can be set up either way by simply changing the power lead polarity. Magic!

Clancy wrote:

I've put this up here before somewhere, but anyway...this is how I see oil temperature.

I got an engine temperature monitor/alarm kit from ebay along with a thermowell of the correct length, an adapter for the M20 dipstick thread and a few other bits & bobs.

Then I soldered the thermistor to wiring that is made for ovens.
I shoved the thermistor down the thermowell along with a good squeeze of heat paste.

I put in a connector near the left throttle body so I could remove the thermowell when I want to measure the oil level.

Now I can see the actual sump oil temperature.

Looks good, rather industrial like the stuff I used to do as an instrumentation technician. I was looking more to monitor the outlet temperature on the oil cooler thermostat that I added but it would be easy enough to do the sump with the proper thermistor. Here in the US Omega has a variety of pre-made and custom made temperature probe types and options.

I put in this dipstick oil temp gauge that I got from MG Cycle a while ago. Pretty easy install, took about 10 seconds. When I first got it, I used to check it out often, but to be honest, I hardly ever look at it any more.

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PilotJet wrote:

I put in this dipstick oil temp gauge that I got from MG Cycle a while ago. Pretty easy install, took about 10 seconds. When I first got it, I used to check it out often, but to be honest, I hardly ever look at it any more.

But you have to be stopped to check it.
I ride year round and in the non-summer months want to know when to stop and unblock the oil cooler air intake.

Ahh ... I get it ... that makes sense. It does seem like the motor takes forever to warm up when the snowflake is showing on the dashboard.

Clancy wrote:

But you have to be stopped to check it.
I ride year round and in the non-summer months want to know when to stop and unblock the oil cooler air intake.

Thermostat. Just sayin'



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Oil temp gauge, I like those oil filled black faced metal dipstick ones like PilotJet has, thats as far as it goes though
As long as you've serviced all the serviceables, tappets/throttle bodies/tps reset/swing arm/ pivot block/headrace why shouldn't you play and fit some useless bling.