Katana Owners Club U.K.

I was told by the previous owner of my 1100 Kat that the speedo reads 20-30mph fast! Is there anyone in the Katana community who can recalibrate our clocks. I emailed Peter Bond from guagerepairs.com (note the spelling?) quoted me £450 to restore the clocks as he says no one else can do them?

The first thing to do is change the speedo drive at the wheel. If it is from a 16" wheel it will read wrongly, also if in the past it has been damaged when putting the wheel back after a tyre swap etc, it may have been stripped .
This would be the cheapest option and rule out that first.
Not come across an 1100 speedo over reading by that much .
Are they Km/h with a new face?

Mmm now I hadn’t thought about a kmh clock and I’m sure the po said the bike originally came from Italy?
As far as a 16” wheel is concerned i didn’t know they where fitted with one but I don’t think it is, I will check and I’ll pull the wheel out and check the drive at the weekend.

some kat sd models came with 16 inch, some with 19 inch. but if the speedo gearing is for a 16 inch front and its running a 19 inch wheel, surely it would read slower, not faster?
is it consistently out of sync? i mean does it read over by the same amount right through the speed range? or does it flutter about at different speeds? when its at rest, does it read zero? perhaps post a pic of your speedo as it is just so we can see if its been tampered with.
incidentally, what does your redline start at? just to confirm that the clocks are off the right model (1100 redlines are different to 750s, and both are tons lower than 250/400) finally, does your odometer register correctly? perhaps go out on another bike or car and mark off a mile section of road, judge it by bridges or lamp posts. then do the same trip on the kat, if it reads that youve done the same distance, then the odometer is correect and your speedo has a problem, but if it registers significantly more distance travelled than it should, it could well just be the wrong speedo drive.

ok, just as a last comment if all else fails. these clocks are brand new BUT they are calibrated in kph and they are from a 400 so top out at 180kmh. HOWEVER, if you were to fit them with a kph/mph converter (esentially a 1.6/1 reduction gear, ) you would end up with a set of 180mph clocks with accurate speed measurement and accurate distance and trip measuring , i cant imagine there are a finite supply of new kat clocks, but as i say, if all else fails, compared to a set of used clocks that may have issues themselves, these seem quite reasonable. i think they are mis described as gsx1400 clocks so perhaps thats why they have some left. theyre also a sight cheaper than having yours restored.

http://www.unicornjapan-shop.com/product/6564

Those unicorn clocks could well be for a GSX1400 as unicorn do a Kat body kit to fit the 1400 Kat .
Irrelevant really because the rest of you above post is a valid point.

Ok, I’ve been for a run out on the Kat tonight as although it was windy it was dry (I don’t do wet weather rides lol) the clock definitely over reads an by the way the odometer was spinning around I would say that also is wrong. I didn’t take my sat nav with me but my seat of the pants speedo says I was doing 65-70 and the speedo was reading 100!
The needle was wavering a bit too.
The front wheel is a 19” wearing a 100-90-19 radial Michelin pilot the rear is also fitted with a Mich pilot. Ok the different profile might alter the speed a bit but not by 35-40mph? I’ll strap the sat nav on her tomorrow and compare it with the gps reading. Is there any way of identifying which speedo drive is fitted? One other thing I noticed is the front brake lever comes back far enough to trap my fingers! (frightened the crap out of me) does the anti dive make bleeding the brakes difficult? I’ve never had a bike with anti dive before. I might have to re-arrange tomorrows mot if I can’t sort it out in the morning. Sorry for bombarding you all with so many questions! On a positive note compared to my old Kettle the Kat goes like stink and pulls from really low down in top gear, what a monster lol

ok, anti dive is a bit like betamax video, a great idea in theory that was popular in the 1980s but abandoned when everyone realised that it wasnt very good. if your lever comes back to the bar, then it may just want bleeding, remember that brake fluid will absorb water from the air and this can play havoc with the operation of the brakes, anti dive doesnt help, but isnt in itself responsible for what you describe. if your fluid is fresh and its still spongy, then check your hoses. brake hoses are a consumable, you should really change stock rubber ones every few years, they perish and go soft, causing them to go spongy like you describe. the anti dive sticks after a while because the circlips inside it go rusty and seize the pistons. i replaced mine with stainless circlips, but you can just remove the hoses from the anti dive units to the calipers and leave the anti dive units on the forks, just without the hoses. take the brake lines to the calipers and replace the double banjo bolts with single ones. if the lever doesnt come all the way back to the bar, then it shouldnt fail an mot, if it can lock the wheel on the brake rollers it will pass, (my 1953 bsa sls drum brake can still do that so the kat should be ok.
it does sound like your speedo is mullered though.

I suspect it is a km clock with a mph clock face , these are availble on eBay . Is the rim marked as in maybe having been removed.?
As for bleeding , tie back the lever , remove resevoir cap , leave overnight it'll bleed itself.

70mph is 112kph.
i dont think its a face problem, after all, regardless of the numbers on the face, 112kph or 70mph, the needle will till be in the same place on the clock.