I have an 883c, and recently I have been having an issue with my speedo. Occaisionally my speedo will go dead while riding, the engine light comes on, but the bike isn't running any differantly. The last time it happened I pulled the VSS, cleaned and re installed and worked great for about 200 miles. I have yet had a chance to try pulling codes nor do I wanna go to the dealer to try and get it diagnosed. I will shut the bike off restart it and seems fine for awhile then happen again. Any thoughts?

 

I had speedo problems with my bike. I replaced the Speed Sensor only to find out I had a bad connection in the wiring harness.

On my bike ( you did not state what year yours is) if you take the seat off, on the battery side there is a square wiring connector attached to the frame top side. They found one of these wires had come loose, reattached the wire plugged the connetor back together and all was well.

Worth looking at anyway, check the wires on both sides of this connecter for any loose wires.

 

I have the same identical problem. Mine went completely dead for about a week and then just decided to start working again. Been working fine about 2 weeks now. Everyone says it's the VSS and I even cleaned mine but it didn't seem to help for very long. Funny how this problem is pretty common. I guess the only thing to do is check your wiring and get a new VSS. They are about 50 bucks at the stealer.

 

What year bike? On '04+ I would run the speedo diagnostic test. If the engine light comes on most likely you have a trouble code present.

The post Running rough...stall..and speedo bouncing has some good suggestions. It could just be a corroded fuse ... for me there was a little corrosion on the + battery cable connnection causing a poor connection to the battery, and solved by a little steel wool cleaning.

If your bike has self diagnostic capabilities I would pull up the codes first ... need to know the symptoms before performing surgery. It is easier and less time consuming.

 

Thank you for all the suggestions, and my bike is an 05 (sorry bout that). I am going to tinker around a bit and see if I can maybe find the problem. If anyone else has suggestions send them my way. Thanks again

 

Ok so I went through and did the diagnostic from the speedo, and no codes. I checked all the fuses and harnesses that I could get to without stripping the bike apart. It doesn't appear to be any kinks in the wiring. I am completely puzzled