Review on Bikers Choice Electronic Custom Tachometer by Jeff Bremmer

I installed this tachometer on my Indian Drifter and it matches the stock speedometer well. Installation is easy, so I'll give my fellow Kawasaki Drifter & Vulcan owners, as well as other motorcycle owners, some good advice: - Installation instructions - FIVE cables to connect. RED needs a 12V source, BLUE can use 5V or 12V, GREEN needs a NEGATIVE signal from the coil, BLACK needs a good GROUND source. Where MUST NOT power the tachometer: This tachometer MUST NOT be powered from the headlight wiring. This will ground the needle as soon as you switch to high beam. DO NOT power the tachometer from the auxiliary wiring on the headlamp housing. The positive 12V wire is hot, so the tach light comes on, eventually draining the battery. Power pressed: look at the schematic. Either positive coil lead will work. Both are marked with a RED wire. You can also connect a 12V source from the fuse box, but I decided against it. Take the RED and BLUE wires and solder them together as they both run off a 12v supply Signal Wire Tap: The GREEN wire can be connected to any coil on the bike. This signal comes from the NEGATIVE side of the coil. Looking at the pictures and diagram, the coil under the Vulcan's gas tank has a wire marked black and white. The second coil is covered by a cover on the right side, which is held in place by a Phillips head screw. The NEGATIVE wire of this coil is marked GREEN. Grounding: Almost anywhere on the bike is fine as long as there is a good connection. Placement of the tachometer wiring: The headlight nacelle is a good place to protect the wiring since you can only get about a foot. and half of it. So it makes sense to connect all of the headlight wiring and have a short stroke, but I don't recommend that for obvious reasons. Read below. Additional Wiring: You will need different lengths of wire depending on where you want to connect your connectors. Clamp Modification: You need to add extra washers and strengthen the rubber. INSTALLATION: Your branch source will determine how you route the wiring. and its length. I decided to connect my 12v source and the NEGATIVE coil signal from the coil on the Vulcan which is protected by the cover. Technically, everything I needed is there, but since I didn't want to run a third cable to the headlight basket (GND), I only connected the power and signal. I ran about 3 feet of wire from the 2nd coil to the headlight bucket with a heat treated wire protector. In the headlight bucket I connected all the cables together. I also used an open GROUND point from the auxiliary wiring provided by Kawasaki (see image). Those are round connectors which I dislike and never use but were easily accessible. I've always used waterproof quick connectors on all my bike projects except this one. The reason for tucking everything into the headlight pan has to do with Biker's Choice being too cheap to allow you longer wiring. The included foot-length strip is protected, so you'll need to secure everything else. The reason you don't connect power and ground to your headlight wiring is for safety reasons. Any short circuit or overvoltage will destroy your headlights. Another issue that was mentioned earlier is grounding your needle on the tachometer. Alternatively, you can route everything from spark plug wires under the seat. This was my original plan, but I found I only had 1/8 heat treated shield wire left, which was quite a long time. The tachometer display is dark, as is my speedometer display. Judging by the comments of other buyers here, this touch isn't waterproof. The included clip needs to be modified depending on how you wrap it around the handlebars. An easy way is to hide the chrome part and expose the rubber side on the front. If you install it like I did where the chrome is most visible you will need to add 2 extra washers and 1 rubber washer and cut a large washer between the rubber and the clamp. I used plasti-spray on the large washer to mix it with the rubber around the yoke. The tachometer comes with two additional rubber strips of different thicknesses with clamp attachment. Initially I used a thicker bar for my 1" bar, but initially it was almost impossible to close the clamp with extra washers. So I used the thinnest of the two strips with 3 washers and rubber between the speedo brace and this held up stopped the speedometer from moving and made it readable even at higher speeds.