GP800 Speedo - The Final Solution

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This time the solution IS definitely final.

Having identified that all the last update provided was some legible MPH markings, without addressing the speeometer innacuracy isssue, I decided to do the job properly.

I cleaned all the markings from the dial - easy enough with a spot of nail varnish remover on a cotton bud - then went out with the trusty RoadPilot MicroGo. I marked the speedo at the significant "GPS correct" MPH speeds then cut out and applied the speed markings from one of the spare MPH stickers from the original set.

Here's the result - neat enough but more importantly GPS correct all round.

Is this the perfect solution - in a word no, but it is final as far as I'm concerned. The downside is that you can't clearly see the markings in the dark - only now evident as the nights are fair drawing in (and it's also dark in the morning when I head in to work) but this is countered by the fact that the Roadpilot's illuminated readout is hightly legible in the dark.

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MPH Speedo - again !

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The final speedo solution - probably not.

My need for a clear legible and accurate speedometer for the GP8000 is starting to turn into an obsession. I found these on eBay and thought I'd give them a try.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300322400500
They arrived promptly and certainly seemed neatly made. 100mm is the correct size for the GP800 so after a little bit of trimming, I offered it up to the Speedo. This is where we found snag #1.

The GP800 has a 100mmm diameter speedometer but the cowling makes it fairly deeply recessed - and the cowling encroaches on the speedo by a couple of mm all round. I didn't think that trimming by that amount would be a particularly neat solution so I decided to (gulp) remove the speedo.

This involves a considerable amount of bodywork removal. If you've ever wondered what a GP800 looks like naked, here it is in all its glory. Dismantling to this degree is not difficult but it is fairly time consuming. You will definitely need the workshop manual(thanks Jim) to find all the various screws and the correct order to remove them. Even then there are two screws not mentioned in the instructions (although they are fairly obvious). I can also pretty much guarantee that at least one of the trim clips will fall into the void somewhere. Once the body panels are removed, taking the speedo out is a little fiddly as the electric screen mechanism gets in the way. A degee of leverage on the "dashboard"helps.

With the speedo removed the job is now looking much easier. I did consider stripping down the unit itself in order to scan the dial face and make a proper job of it - but to be honest it looked a little scary - and I'm sure that water ingress would be the inevitable result. Perhaps when the bike is out of warranty in another years time I might give it a go.

Fitting the sticker is very straightforward. I debated trying to set the numbers correctly for "real speed" as opposed to indicated speed but I decided that would potentially compound any errors and anyway the GP800's speedo gets progressively more innacurate as the speed rises so it would ony be correct at one speed. I decided to stick to marked speeds as I have the GPS speedo for accuracy anyway so I just lined up the 0 position. Once fitted I was left with some sticky residue from the tape I had used to hold it in place while lining it up. I tried simple cleaning but here is where I made my mistake. When cleaning things like this, they always say "try a little on a small area first". I can see why ! If you're planning to do this, remember that nail varnish remover will take off ink from speedometer conversion stickers. You can see the evidence of this (and my attempts to rectify the problem) at the 100 and 110 mph positions - thanks to "write all" CD pens.

In use it's fine - it's aesthetically OK but obviously not matched to the GP800's instruments. Most importantly it gives you the "quick glance" indication of speed so essential on todays roads. The degree of error in the GP's speedo means that an indicated 30mph is about 29, 40 is about 36-37, 50 is about 44-45 and by the time you get to 70 your actual speed is bareley over 60 - but that's the GP800's problem not the speedo sticker.

In all, recomended to all GP800 owners in the UK.

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GP800 - GPS Speedometer

I have said it often enough - but it stands another repeat, the single worst feature of the GP800 is its speedometer. It is illegible in MPH to any normal human. The numbers are too small and it really should not be necessary on a £6,500 bike to paint lines at 30mph and 50mph to ensure that you are within the speed limit of the multiplicity of "safety" cameras that blight this land. It's not as if Piaggio are a small importer, they are the biggest PTW manufacturer in Europe and are consistently the number four seller of bikes in the UK. The GP800 is their flagship product - if they can't be bothered to give it and accurately marked MPH speedo, they could have simply fitted a digital one. To add insult to injury, the accuracy of the speedo is appalling. On a journey where I was using the Nokia GPS Sportstracker feature on my mobile phone, I may have exceeded the speed limit by a small margin - the GPS tracklog showed I was travelling far slower than I thought I was.


I had looked at replacing the speedo face - there's a place in Germany that will make the first one free but I couldn't face the amount of dismantling required to get to the speedo (or the loss of use of the bike while it was done) so I just kept moaning. There are also plenty of overlays that go above the instrument glass but I think that's too "cheap" a solution - I may change my mind as the bike gets older (and/or this country's persecution of speed gets any greater)

I had pretty much given up on a good solution when I happened to notice an "Indic8tor" on eBay. A little reseach showed that there were a number of these GPS speed camera detectors on the market (Indic8tor, Talex, Road Pilot etc - I won't link to them all, if you've found this blog you can probably use Google all by yourself :-)) . They are perfectly legal in the UK as they do not actually "detect" the cameras (Laser based camera detecters ARE illegal), they simply use a database of locations just like a normal SatNav.


What's more (a bonus for the dedicated cheapskate) these things start at around £50 complete with their first camera database subscription - and once that is out of date, they cost £50 per year to keep them updated. Once they are "Database Expired", they appear cheaply on eBay.

The Talex and Indic8tor looked good and their LED displays looked highly legible but a quick trip to Halfords revealed that their size might make fitting diffcult on the GP800. The Roadpilot MicroGO did however look just the ticket.


A few days carefully watching on eBay and I picked one up for just £18 :-).


In a nutshell it's an excellent (if not quite perfect) solution. It fits neatly on the top of the dash and it's connected to a standard cigarette lighter socket fitted under the dash next to the battery (wired to the fusebox). The device has no internal battery at all so it is only powered up when connected.


The normal suction cup mount is screwed down and it's a pretty sturdy fit. It doesn't affect the movement of the electric screen in any way and the power lead drops down throught the screen mount slot.


when removed, the mount itself keeps the lead in place.

As soon as the bike is fired up, it switches itself on and starts searching for satellites. It seems slower to get a "fix" than my Garmin Nuvi 360 in the car but once it does lock on it seems to hold the signal perfectly well. As with all GPS devices, if you can't wait for the fix and start moving, the fix takes even longer. I tend to do this and it cakes up to 5 minutes to fix - I live with this - it's not as if it's my only speedo, its a supplementary device anyway. once it has achieved a fix it immediately tells you that the database has expired but you simply press the single control button and it goes to the speed display.



When moving, it does exactly what is says on the tin - it dispalys the speed in mph pretty clearly - and way better than the OE analogue speedometer. It catches up quickly with rapid acceleration (at least as good as a Citroen car with digital speedo) and slows down almost as fast.

It doesn't seem to vibrate too much (doesn't affect clarity) and the only effect of the vibtration is to caust the flip out antenna at the back to drop down. When this happens, the number of satelittes "seen" reduces but the lock is maintained. I just flick it back up when I notice it - but I may employ a high-tech piece of blu-tack in future.


There is a problem with visibility in bright sunlight but I thing that's a result of the possitioning rahter than a fault with the unit. Having said that, it could do with a brighter backlight. The manual claims that it has a myriad of backlight colours to match - and these can be endlessly cycled through in the settings menu but to be honest (as the pictures show) it always seems to look like "LCD green/grey" whatever the setting. It is much better in the dark where it does show a sort of washed out version of the orange backlighting of the GP800's centre LCD panel. I may look to ocnstruct a smple "hood" at some time in the future if the summer proves to be a good one.


Of course it does also work as a speed camera detector. Even with an outdated database, it still warns of longstanding cameras (of course I am fully aware of their location anyway ) and if you wanted one of these for its stated purpose I'd say it does a good job. The screen dispalys both the speed limit and your speed and the diplay is flashing if you are over the limit. It does feature an audible warning which I suppose would be useful in a car but I have this switched off.

All in all, I'm very pleased.

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