First Report on KOSO Tach with Temp Gauge

[V7Goose]

I have just purchased a new KOSO GP Style Tachometer with Water Temperature, BA551B23, (first item on page 12 here): http://www.kosonorthamerica.com/ Paid $150, delivered.

 

The idea was to reduce the number of gauges I need by one to fit them all under the dash, like this:

[ATTACH]46369[/ATTACH]

 

So far, my report is decidedly mixed.

 

First, the gauge is very impressive in the details of construction and parts supplied. But that is dampened by the absolute WORST Chinenglish - no, let me rephrase that - the documentation that comes with this thing is not NEAR good enough to be even derisively called Chinenglish - let's say Chinengiliberish! Not only is the wording so bad that much of it is totally unintelligible, but a few very key points are absolutely WRONG!

 

The wiring harness is very impressive, with each section connected by plugs. The harness for the water temp sensor is just barely long enough for our bike, but I guess that is better than being too short! The tach input can be picked up by EITHER connecting to a coil or wrapping a wire around a spark plug lead. Compared to the minimal length of the temp sensor wires, the wires for connecting to a coil are plenty long enough to connect to your buddy's machine as he rides next to you on the highway.

 

The gauge mounting hardware is all rubber mounted, and while the bar clamp is specifically sized to use on a normal 7/8" bar, it will work on our 1" bars with a bit of effort. The gauge itself is a bit larger than the 1 7/8" mini Drag Specialties tach which I prefer, but if you get it positioned just right it does fit under the dash at full lock, but just barely!

 

Partially because this gauge is completely electronic, the wire connections are just slightly different than usual - one wire connects to battery hot, and another wire connects to ignition 12V. There is no separate wire for dash lights, so they are on all the time. While this probably makes no difference to most folks, it irks me a bit since I have the other gauges wired separately to a switch specifically for dash lights. Oh well . . . I can learn to live with that.

 

The tach is truly a universal tach, as there are settings to select for both two stroke and four stroke engines, from one cylinder all the way up to 12 cylinders! But you do need quite a bit of imagination to understand what the instructions are trying to tell you about how to set those selections. Likewise, the temperature gauge can be set to display either Celsius or Fahrenheit.

 

Unfortunately, the biggest issue is that the gauge did not work for more than 5 minutes! Everything seemed fine when I first hooked it up and set the proper formats, but the next time I turned the key on, the LCD display (temperature and configuration settings) was completely blank. The tach still seems to work OK, and the lights are on, but I can't get anything from the mode buttons or any display at all on the LCD screen. So now I am waiting to see how much trouble it will be to get this thing replaced. I'll let y'all know how that comes out.

Goose

[RandyR]

Thanks Goose.

 

I want to add tach and gauges. Hopefully you can get yours working without too much hassle. I'm going to be looking around at MD at what others are using.

[Squeeze]

Hey Goose, i had my own bad Experience with Koso Products, but that was 4 or 5 Years ago.

 

I use a Acewell Instrument (2852 iirc) finally and it's much better than the Koso Crap. Don't know if those are sold in US, though.

Edited June 13, 2010 by Squeeze
typo

[outlawauto38]

i have one and it works great