Fitting a voltmeter

[speedy231278]

As I seem to be attracting more charging system woes, I've decided that I'm going to fit a voltmeter to the bike so I have half an idea what the bloody thing has in store for me when I stop. Last time I did this, I simply wired a cheap digital one into the battery terminals (with a fuse) and put a switch on it to stop it discharging the battery when the bike wasn't being used. It worked, but was crude and the thing was taped to the tank, and I had to remember to turn it off. So this time, I'm going to do it properly.

As I want this to be a permanent feature, it needs to be switched, but I'm going to let the ignition switch do that for me. That leaves the question as to where I pinch the feed from, and how that choice might affect the reading. I don't really want to have to modify the loom. Right now, my thoughts are that I will jump it from the low beam relay I installed. If I were to attach it to the output of said relay, it would only come on when the lights were on, which is whenever the ignition switch is on and the starter button isn't pressed. One drawback is that it will only measure the battery when the lights are on unless I were to pull the connectors off, and that assumes that by doing so I don't break the connection to earth.... I'm not too fussed about that as it's only two allen bolts to get the seat off. I am assuming that as the meter measures 140KOhms across the terminals, it will not have any meaningful effect on the output of the headlamp circuit, however will being in a high draw circuit have any effect on the reading of the meter? Would I be better off taking the feed from somewhere in the fusebox even if it means more wiring to get it all the way to the dash?

I just want to get a better understanding of what is going on with the poxy thing before I start spending more time and money on fixing something that may or may not be the issue!

[bikemonkey]

I have a Koso voltmeter on my bike, works a treat.

Took the positive from the killswitch and took the negative straight to the left hand forward earthing point.

http://www.digital-speedos.co.uk/black- ... e-13-p.asp

[Morespeedvicar]

There loads a small voltmeters on ebay. You can use head lamp feeds or side lamps but there will be a small drop due to the load, or as monkey says use kill switch or any switched +12v line.