Corbin Speedometer's

[marsh1915hd]

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[Steve Slocombe]

Dear Terry, nice to see you again at Oley and I was judging there so now ready to go into rivet counting mode. Your pictures show a black nut on the Corbin cable, and I like to see the flat nickel or cad nuts on the VLs. Are the nut finishes different between Harley and Indian, or early and late cables, or don't we know?

[Shaky Jake]

Just came across this thread. Very interesting. My 1941 Chief is missing the little trip meter button that is shown in this picture, which I copied from one of your earlier posts. Can this part be replaced from the outside, or does it require the speedo to be disassembled? The speedo is working well, so I don’t really want to take it apart if I don’t have to.



Thanks!

Kevin

[loch]

Not sure if this thread is dead or not. I'm on the hunt for a Corbin Speedometer and components for my 1932 Harley VL. Anyway have any ideas for sources?

[PaulCDF]

" I'm on the hunt for a Corbin Speedometer and components for my 1932 Harley VL. Anyway have any ideas for sources?"

Loch

I "stole" this from a previous thread on the subject:

"Terry Marsh: Klamath Falls,Ore. (541)882-2613 .
Terry is all things CORBIN I highly recommend Terry Marsh. He makes custom length cables and more. (Corbin)

For those to the east, looks like its... J Napierala Speedometer Shop (905)659-6434 .
Ontario, Canada . ad in the AMCA magazine . I have read good reviews here (Corbin)"

Place to start.

Good Luck Happy New Year!

[loch]

Thanks Paul!

[loch]

I contacted The Speedometer Shop and spoke to a gentleman about a 1932 "commercial speedometer" that was apparently offered without an odometer. He claimed the speedometer was sold as the base option in 1932. Not sure if he meant vehicles in general or Harley Davidson specifically. Regardless, it's still pricey. And honestly I'm only looking for a means to measure speed and ultimately distance, for the Cannonball.

Any ideas or insight to this particular dilemma?

Oh, this is for my '32 VL.

Thanks,
Loch

[PaulCDF]

Loch

Ideas!? Any Idea?!?!
OH I got LOTS of IDEAS!!!
! (Thats my Jack Nick Impression from Easy Rider when asked if he had a helmet (In case you couldn't tell)

Okay I'll dial it down. Don't know if they allow it in the Cannonball but here's one:

Bob's Indians: BUILD A CORBIN "GPS" SPEEDOMETER (bobsindians.blogspot.com)

[loch]

That's an awesome idea! And yes, that's a great film!

For the Cannonball, it doesn't have to be museum accurate or in the case of speedos not even period correct - it just has to be. And this year it almost seems like a suggestion more than a requirement.

[Beemererik]

If this is for the Cannonball - I use a Garmin Bicycle GPS Speedometer/Odometer. Mine is an Edge 200. I don't believe you can get these anymore. I did some test riding with a friend who will be riding the next Cannonball this summer and I believe the model he was using is an Edge 530 which has a 20-hour battery vs. a couple of cheaper models that advertise 12-hours. Odometer accuracy is important as the instructions are in 0.00-mile increments (example:122.16) which the Garmin does. It also needs to run for 10+ hours on a single charge - so I might be hesitant to buy the cheapest battery powered one out there as they tend to have smaller batteries. If you go to Garmin and look up the Edge series, you can see the various models. Some use a cheaper model speedo/odometer with a magnetic wheel sensor (does not use GPS). They seem to struggle with odometer accuracy a lot which can be a problem on the Cannonball.

Many still have the factory speedo on the bike but don't rely on it for navigation. A Garmin clamped to the handlebars does the trick.

I also would not buy a used Garmin for this event unless it is only a couple of years old as battery capacity decreases with age and charge/discharge cycles. You don't want to lose you odometer in the middle of a day!

[loch]

Erik,

Good tips, thank you! I will definitely look at the Garmin as an option now.

Update: first glance, the 530 has mapping features? I'm pretty sure gps with mapping are not allowed in the Cannonball.

Cheers,
Loch

[Beemererik]

Send the Cannonball an email or give them a call if that is a model you like and are concerned if it is legal. However, I know entrants who have used it. Typically, the routes for the day are handed out 30 minutes before the days start. Some routes may have 50+ turns. It would be pretty impressive if you could transfer the paper route into a turn-by-turn file and load it in a short period of time.

If you go with a Garmin, I would practice starting it, stopping it, resetting it, etc. on test rides prior to the Cannonball. They have a few functions available that you will not use and you want to be real comfortable with it before you are at the start line. I would play with it to get it to the various menus and make sure you can navigate back to the screen you will use. You can accidentally end up on the wrong screen if you hit the wrong button and if you are in the middle of the ride and don't know how to get back that is stressful. That was the purpose of the test ride I did with my friend last summer (getting him used to operating the unit during a day's ride). I normally start mine at the beginning of the day and let it run the entire day (even through lunch stops). Some models may go into standby if movement is not detected for a period of time (like lunch), or if you decide you want to shut it down during lunch to save power, when you bring it back online you want the odometer to reflect the mileage where you are and not reset to 0. Having your odometer not match the route mileage requires a lot of mental math the rest of the day to make sure you don't miss a turn.

On mine I use the screen showing Speed, Odometer, Elapsed time. I used mileage and elapsed time to determine oil changes during the day. I dump my oil and put fresh in about every 60-75 minutes or 60 miles whichever is first (It's a 1915 Harley ~ 3oz of oil).

If you have other questions, we should probably take this offline as I don't want to hijack this thread.

[gharper]

Loch,

If you're doing the cannonball, beware..... Absolutely NO GPS navigation devices are allowed. I believe you CAN use GPS speedometers though as long as there is no mapping or navigation included. However I think the better option is a STRYKER unit. I used one on the 18 Cannonball and recently on the Lindbergh Ride, so a total of about 9000 miles on these 2 units and I love them.

Here is the unit I used: https://www.trailtech.net/en-us/shop...ker-voltmeter/

This unit can give incredibly accurate distance measurements IF you take the time to calibrate it correctly! Mount the sensor on the FRONT wheel, as the rear will wear faster and change the accuracy.

In addition, it can measure battery voltage, cylinder head temperature, elapsed time, current time, ambient temperature and has a trip odometer as well. All of these are very helpful tools to have. Another nice feature is the ability to stop and readjust the trip odometer, down to .01 miles so it will always match the route sheet. For example, you're dead nuts on the mileage for turns, stops etc. Suddenly you have a brain fart and miss the turn! You get turned around and back on course but now your total mileage is off and does not match the instruction sheet because it has added your detour distance to the total. Depending on the length of your detour you could easily miss the next turn, not good. Easy enough though. Simply stop at a known spot, say the exact spot where you should have turned and readjust the odometer to match the number on the route sheet, easily done with the bush of a couple buttons. Now you're dead on again. I guarantee you will make wrong turns!

Stryker makes a LOT of different models, some much more basic. For the Cannonball I set up the map roller and a separate odometer mounted on the sidecar for my wife. This kept her engaged in the ride more, which helped me out too because when traffic was an issue, or something was up with the bike, I didn't have to worry about the route. This worked well most of the time but we did have a few arguments about what the instructions really meant. She earned the title of my loving NAGIVATOR! Lots of other riders figured this out and followed us because we had a bit of an advantage here at times. Anyway, I used a simpler Stryker unit with the sensor on the sidecar wheel: https://www.trailtech.net/en-us/shop...i-kit-for-atv/ This unit does not measure temperatures or voltage and only measures distance to .10 miles. We could never get it calibrated as accurately as the main unit but we did use the trip odometer to keep track of distance per fuel tank.

So, lots of options here. Just be sure whatever you use is as accurate as possible and practice with it so you know all the features available!

Sorry for diverting from the Corbin thread......

[loch]

Thanks for the info G. I've pretty much given up on the Corbin factor. I do have a speedo, just came this week. It's a really well done knockoff, except that it has no odometer. Looks cool. But pretty much useless for my purposes at the moment. I'm looking into the gps speedo idea - given all of the rhetoric about the inaccuracy of old speedometers.

I do have one question. I'm guessing this runs off of a 12V system. I have experience with 12 to 24V step up converters in big vehicles. And it's not good. The load on the high side of the converter can over draw the power input on the low side. So my question is, how did you account for that? Or did you experience any brown outs in the GPS. I assume low voltage will result in no, or inaccurate readings as satellite hits will be missed if not enough power to capture and use the data.

Was your generator able to keep up with the power requirements of the STRYKER?

Thanks,
Loch

[Steve Slocombe]

Dear Loch, I've fitted a 12 volt rev counter to a 6 v bike before, and used a 9 volt smoke alarm battery taped to the handlebars, which worked OK for what I was trying to do, but not too pretty.