Danmoto 180 installation

[Sidecar Bob]

Some of you may recall this thread from 2013 started by Icallison about the inexpensive Chinese instrument panel he bought from eBay seller Hercolor. Since I had one of them on my winter machine I got involved and from post #86 on basically hijacked the thread to describe installing one on my 'Wing.

This thread is about how I replaced it with something decent: The Danmoto SP-00008 180º Digital Cockpit (better known as the "Danmoto 180")

What a difference:
- Almost every wire's colour matches Honda's standards. Not a huge deal, but it makes things a tiny bit easier, especially if I have to troubleshoot something at some time in the future.
- Unlike the other ones which were called different things by different sellers, this one actually has Danmoto's logo cast into the back, and it even has an instruction sheet that, while it has a few typos, looks like it has actually been approved by someone who thinks in English.
- The fuel gauge is set for 0-100 ohms, which should be close enough to give meaningful readings with the 'Wing's sender.
- The instruction sheet says the temp gauge needs a different range of resistance than the Honda sender provides but the one on the 650 seems to work OK.
- The speedo/odo should be accurate after I measure the circumference of the tire and enter it as described in the instructions.
- The hall sensor looks much better quality, metal instead of plastic and with a much longer wire (I had to extend the old one when I installed it)
- It even toggles between Miles & Kilometers by pressing a button for a few seconds if i ever feel nostalgic for 40 years ago.

[Sidecar Bob]

(you might want to compare these pics with the ones from 2013 in the other thread)

To prepare the Danmoto 180 for installation I cut off all of the bullet connectors except on the light blue (right turn signal), orange (left turn signal) and blue (high beam) wires and crimped on new Sumitomo type 2.8mm male terminals. If you are doing this you could also leave the bullet on the blue/black (tach trigger) but since I already had a 2.8mm connector with a wire to the ignition I elected to change match the wire from the 180 to that. After that I removed the terminals from the 9 way connector that was on the old instrument panel and inserted the new terminals into it to match the bike's wiring per the following list:
Danmoto GL1100
blue/white blue/red (oil light)
purple green/blue (temp gauge)
green green (ground)
red black (switched power)
brown black/brown (instrument lighting)
yellow/white yellow/white (fuel gauge)
lt green/red light green/red (neutral light)

and I inserted the tach trigger wire into the appropriate connector

Danmoto 180 ready to install Mr.H.jpg

[Sidecar Bob]

Since the Danmoto 180 includes turn signal indicators and a neutral light that are visible and work well I no longer needed the LEDs I had installed in the front panel of the speaker/wiring box so I was able to eliminate them. I moved the bike headlight & sidecar headlight indicators (5mm white flat top LEDs) into the holes from the turn signal LEDs and replaced the big red button for the novelty oogah horn with a smaller one (it has a relay) between them, which left room to mount a voltmeter in the middle of the panel.

While it was apart I also replaced the stereo with a Kentiger HY-502 like I have in the 650's fairing. Since it is actually stereo (the old one was mono) I had to replace the L-pad with a stereo one (orange object in the pic below). And since the speaker outputs are not grounded I needed at least 3 more conductors so I made a cable with a couple of lengths of speaker wire and some heat shrink and ran that from the box to the sidecar.

Here is the front panel of my speaker/wiring box with all of the other wiring changes made and the Danmoto attached. I was lucky - the spacing was a little different but since the old one had M8 studs and the new one has M6 I didn't have to alter the holes.

Danmoto 180 Mr.H front panel inside.JPG

And here it is mounted on the bike (taken after a test drive)

Danmoto 180 Mr.H installed.JPG

BTW: Here's the new stereo

Kentiger HY-502 Mr.JPG

[Sidecar Bob]

Because my forks are not original I have spacers between the caliper brackets and the forks. When I converted to the old digital speedo I mounted the speedo sensor in one of the spacers and drilled a through hole in the bracket to clear it. If you are doing this your installation will be closer to what I did on the 650 so I am including that here.

I mounted the magnet in one of the slots in the brake disc. If your disc doesn't have slots it is pretty easy to drill a hole in a suitable location. Then I found the place on the caliper bracket that was clear of the caliper and lined up with the magnet and marked it. The thread on the sensor is M10 1.0. I didn't have that tap but 27 threads/in = 0.94mm/thread, which is close enough so I drilled a 21/64" hole & carefully ran a 1/8-27 NPT tap into it. The pipe thread tap is tapered so you have to run it in from one side until the sensor will thread in almost half way and then run it in from the other side until the sensor can thread right in.

Because the hole is in a recessed spot I added a spacer between the carrier and the jam nut. I also coated the threads with silicone sealant to keep moisture from getting between the aluminum bracket and the stainless steel sensor housing.

Here is the sensor in the caliper bracket

sensor in caliper carrier July 2014.JPG

And here it is on the bike

sensor on fork July 2014.JPG

[Sidecar Bob]

IMPORTANT NOTES:
TACH
- I forgot to mention that the other end of my tach trigger wire is connected to the yellow wire to the coil. The blue wire would have worked just as well.
- When first installed the tach jumped all over and seemed to be reading high. At first I thought it was defective or something to do with the Dyna S but I searched online and found someone on another forum who had the same problem and solved it by installing a 10,000 ohm resistor in series with the tach trigger wire. I didn't have a 10K handy so I used a 12K and the tach smoothed right out. Danmoto tech support says that the resistor buffers the triangular wave caused by the coil's discharge so that the tach sees it as a square wave.

FUEL GAUGE
With the bike's original fuel gauge I usually went about 30Km before the gauge started to move and then it worked steadily & consistently, crossing into the red just as I needed to switch to reserve. I was happy with that because I am far more concerned about accuracy in the second half of the tank than the first.
The Danmoto 180 read full until one block went out somewhere between 45 and 50Km. At 77 it still reads the same (IIRC I was getting about 200 Km to reserve the last time everything was working properly). Once I have run through a tank of fuel I will report back.

[ericheath]

Retirement is good, Bob. Nice report. The resistor for the coil may help a few who've tried it.

[Sidecar Bob]

Yeah. If I wasn't retired I would have had to do the instrument panel over 1 weekend and the stereo the next. And that's assuming I didn't have other stuff I had to do instead.

BTW: I built that speaker/wiring box because I was tired of crappy little handlebar mounted speakers that were more like tweeters. Since Eccles has a fairing for stuff like that I just came up with a little bracket.

Eccles Mileage 03 Jan 2015.JPG

I went out for a short drive this afternoon and another block in the fuel gauge went out at around 82Km.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: The one thing I don't like about the one on Eccles is that at certain times of year the sun over my shoulder during my commute would reflect off of the chromed rim and shine right in my eyes. I don't expect that to be commuting again but just in case I painted the new one with Stainless Steel Appliance Epoxy (the same stuff I did the bracket on Eccles with). One of these days I am going to do the same with the other one...

[Sugs]

Nice write up, thanks for that. May consider this in the future.

[Sidecar Bob]

It ran out of gas idling in the garage after I tried turning down the idle (there's another thread about that) with 4 blocks showing on the gauge (petcock set to ON) so I took the opportunity to tweak the sender to match the gauge. The first thing I discovered is that there is a time delay in the electronics so that the gauge doesn't move as soon as the sender does. When driving that would prevent the gauge from jumping when you hit a bump and the fuel sloshes. But for adjusting the sender it became frustrating so I took to rebooting the Danmoto by turning the key off and back on every time I changed something because it was faster. With a little judicious tweaking of the sender's arm stops I set the sender so that its wiper is almost at the end of the coil at each end of the arm's stroke, which produced a range of about 8 ohms at its maximum level and 99 ohms at its lowest level. Then I tweaked the arm slightly so that when I put it in place the bottom half of the float gets wet and the gauge reads empty and flashes. From holding it next to the tank I am hoping that it will read full after I fill it (I won't know until maybe tomorrow) and flash just before reserve.

BTW: I never noticed before how much higher the tank's filler is than the top of the tank where the sender mounts.

[Whiskerfish]

Yea that is why some folks experience leakage after fill ups.

[Sidecar Bob]

Shouldn't be a big deal to fix... Clean up the seating areas and replace the seal...

[Sidecar Bob]

It looks like I got the sender adjusted just about perfectly. It takes quite a while for the first square on the gauge to go out (probably because there is more than a litre above the highest point the sender's float can reach) but after that it moves downward steadily and starts to flash just about when I need to switch to reserve.