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Speedo not responding on 2003 RS

1K views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  TheToeCutter 
#1 ·
I put my Sprint away last November with a functioning speedometer. Took it out on the weekend to blow the dust off it, and the speedo is not responding. Just showing 0km/h all the time.

Is there a particular place I can start with this one? Any inheriant issues with the RS that I could start with? Any advice would be helpful. The last speedo cable I changed was on my old Kawi, which ran off a gear on the front wheel....... but I understand newer bikes run off the transmission....?

Thanks, in advance! (BTW it is the SSSA version of the RS).
 
#2 ·
My '04 RS will do that unless I keep it on a battery tender, even with a new battery. I'd start by keeping it on a tender that's meant for AGM batteries. If that solves your problem, great. If not, then I'd start suspecting the sender unit on the front wheel.
 
#4 ·
My 2003 SSSA Sprint RS was showing the same problem after a hard salty winters riding.
Sometimes it would show 0, with occasional 1's, othertimes it would work fine.
When I took it in for new tyres, my independant mechanical genius explained that the cable has a number of joints in its route from the sensor to the display. Any one of these can get water/salt etc in and cause this problem.
The funny thing was, after he had taken the front wheel off and put it back on with the new tyre my problem was gone. The process of taking off the sensor, giving it a wiggle and putting it back has cleared the fault.
I would start there.
Good luck.
Martin
 
#6 ·
...The funny thing was, after he had taken the front wheel off and put it back on with the new tyre my problem was gone. The process of taking off the sensor, giving it a wiggle and putting it back has cleared the fault....
In your case Martin, I would be more inclined to believe that what he actually did was re-assemble the sender in the wheel CORRECTLY - there is a 'drive ring' that has a pair of tangs that engage in some corresponding detents in the speed sensor magnet - it is very easy to not have these properly engaged when re-installing a wheel.
In most cases, rather than fixing the problem, most tire shops will actually create a problem, which usually results in the magnet being fractured - VERY expensive mistake!
 
#5 ·
This is a relatively common issue with bikes from around that timeframe that still have the original factory installed 'tune' in the ECM
There was a 'feature' called 'speedo error check' that disables the speedo when there is a low battery condition - even if sufficently charged however, this condition can manifest itselfupon starting.
Typically, after a re-start some time later it will come back and function normally.

(Back when this first become a real nuisance, there were a lot if people on the S3 forum who were coming up with different convoluted sequences of starting procedures as a 'work-around'
- ignition on. let pump prime, ignition off then on agian, kill-switch on/off etc - some swore that they had the 'magic sequence' - I think they just got lucky with the sample point at which the ECM read the voltage!)

This is the tell-tale sign of the 'tune' code type of failure, versus a speedo that reads low, changing numbers - which is indicative of broken sensor magnet.

All of the updated tunes from Triumph now disable this 'feature' inherently, as it was particularly troublesome.
It is as simple as taking bike to dealer and asking them to upload the most recent variant of tune appropriate for your year & model.

Incidentally your speedo drive is on the front axle, right side.
 
#7 ·
This is great info; hope it helps the OP too. My bike does have the original tune. I'll keep it on the tender until I have it in the shop for its 24K mile service and will get the tune updated then. It bothers me that I don't know how many miles the previous owners racked up while the speedo (and odo) were non-functional.
 
#8 · (Edited)
*Update* Charged the battery up full and it works like a charm now! Thanks all!

Fantastic! That makes sense since I charged the battery just enough to fire it up..... I will put it on the charger longer, and take it for a good long ride to see if that charges it back up.

Thanks DeCosse and all others!

BTW, I was surprised to hear that the RS doesn't have a tranny driven speedo.... I guess this means my 18T front sprocket conversion would not have afffected the accuracy of the speedo! Here I was driving 10km/h faster thinking the speedo was reporting artificially low....... oooops.
 
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