acewell dash

[mines got a bonnet]

hi all

looking at fitting my acewell 3100 series dash and started looking at the electrical diagram. for the rev counter, it says to wrap one of its cables around the + on the coil or connect it to the +. obiously the cable that comes with the dash is too short, so i was wondering if anyone has had any success at getting the rev counter working by extending this cable. bit concerned about volt drop of a joint and aditional cable causing the tacho to give a false reading or not working at all

anyone any experience of this??

 

[Phaeton]

I have extended mine & it works a treat, had to go into the setup of the Acewell & set it to 0.5 as it was reading 2x the revs on the 1 default. I have just attached the wire to the + terminal on the coil.

Alan...

 

[esdebe]

I have found a gearbox sendor that should work with this unit if anyone wants to have acurate readings without having to glue magnets to wheels, or implant them into breake disks.

http://www.donbarrow.co.uk/terratrip_tripmeters.html item BR04

I'm thinking of ordering one myself, however calibrating it againts the gearbox may take a bit more maths... Need to find out how many times the square peg rotates per wheel revolution. This should just be a simple case of creating a small electronic counter (you can get one from maplin, I'd look at using a laptop and a modified mouse (left click and right click and a small program to count the clicks)) attach one to the gearbox sender, temporaly using the magnet and reed that comes with the acewell connect another counter to a wheel, then go for a drive. at then end take the two readings devide one by the other to find the ratio, and then use that ratio along with the external circumferance of your tyre to calculate the distance of one rotation at the gearbox end and use it for the acewell size setting.

Simon

 

[Phaeton]

Simon, I like the idea of that, then it wouldn't matter which wheel I had on the front. As to calibration would it not be just far easier to wire it up, take your sat nav with you & alter the numbers on the fly until you get a suitable accuracy? This is the way I intend to sort mine out this afternoon.

Bearing in mind I have only done about 5 miles in the buggy one thing i did notice last night was under acceleration the number seemed to jump about a bit, once a a relative constant speed it settled down.

Alan...

 

[esdebe]

I've now ordered one of those sensors so I'll let you all know how it goes...

Prior to this I did try to move the magnet from the wheel to the brake disk, all was well until I had to brake and reduce my speed from 70 to 30, shortly after this the sensor seem to stop working but it turns out the heat in the brake disk had de-magnasised my magnet, so until the new gearbox sendor arrives I'm back to the magnet mounted on the wheel rim... Now I need to find the unlucy mouse that will be sacrifised to count the revolutions.....

 

[esdebe]

Well, it arrived today, and I had a few fiddly issues, all of which have now been resolved and my speedo is now driven from a sender attached to the gearbox output.

Issues:-

1) There are three wires on the sender, a + a - and a return (generated signal). The acewell has 2 wires which when probed apear to be a +5 V and a return for the switch. After many combinations I found the follwoing set up to work. Connecting a fresh new +12V (anything between 5 and 13 is allowed) to the + (red cable on the sender) then connect the black - cable to the white return to the acewell, and connect the white output cable from sender to the Green (what apears to be a +5V) on the acewell.

2) Wheel size / gearbox revolutions. I started the mathematical way and using a pointer and varous markers rotated the rear wheel until I could found that a Multimeter recording the output on the white wire from the sender jumped from 0 to 5 or from 5 to 0 (there are 4 pulses per recolution from the gearbox) I measured these and found that the wheel rotates 1.174 revolutins to every full rotation of the gearbox output. From this I calculated the circumference required for the acewell was 337mm. I think my measurements were not too acurate, but it was a good starting point, after attaching the satnav I found a setting of 310 to be more accurate. (Note to myself. If I change wheel size I need to devide the circumference by 5.092 to get the size needed for the acewell)

3) The fittings do not match the A series gearbox, I wasn't sure that they would, but using an old spedo cable I soon had it fitting properly. The screw cap is the wrong pitch, However a small screw removed from the sendor allows the cap to be removed, a quick snip through the old speedo cable and off comes the old cap, this gets put on the sender , and a jobs a good un. Next the square probe isn't the right size square, it is too small and the is a bit too much play. I too an old 5mm bolt, and filed it to a square and swaped out the probe (the probe is interchangable anyway).


If anyone else is looking at doing this they may wish to opt for the type that can be put onto an exisitng speedo cable as that will work with less messing about than I did. I am however happy with the stability and steady speedo readings I am now getting.

 

[Phaeton]

Good work Simon, might have to invest in one of these, mine is good execpt between 25-30 where it seems to randomly double the speed.

Alan...