18 Road King and the Tach Nazi
 

You want a handlebar tachometer on your 2017, 2018 or 2019 Road King so you don't have to take your eyes off the road or look down 250 times a day at a stupid little LCD screen???
Harley says:
NO TACH FOR YOU!

The police bikes and other touring bikes of the same year with the same engine have separate speedo/tachs. The RK has a gear/tach readout, but Harley service personnel say it "can't be done with the current BCU/ECU setup".
Really??
There is a member on this site (MaxHeadflow) who has figured it out (Can Bus). But he is basically an engineer with instructions that are too complicated for me to understand.
He also says that a coil driven tach will work connecting it to the "primary coil wire with a 1K ohm resistor in series with the tach".
Huh?
I'm just a dumb**s who wants a handlebar tachometer, I guess.
Sounds like I'm going to mess up a $30,000 Road King if I try it.

Someone please figure this out. I'm about to offer MaxHeadflow $1000 for a F***ing tachometer.
"Get this tach. Splice into this wire. Enjoy your handlebar tachometer." 1.2.3 done.

PS. Please.No old guys telling me to listen to my engine.
1 .Knowing what gear you are in and RPM is important when you are on mountain roads steep grades and cliffs on both sides.
2. Engine sounds different at the same RPM going uphill vs. downhill.
3. When you are riding 8 hours a day across the country your neck and eyes are sore from looking down and squinting at this little LCD screen taking your eyes off the road.
4.When riding hard, knowing the RPM is important.

Thousands of people on this site. Come on!

This made me giggle.

Do you have a link to the instructions you mentioned from MaxHeadflow?

I have a 2011 RKC and the Nacelle mounted tach in the billet frame was the first upgrade. Very few people wanted to pay the $500 for the parts to put this tach on their Road Kings so Harley stopped supplying them. The masses chose the goofy little tach in the speedometer instead.

I, and probably a bunch of others, must be riding savants cause I spent a lot of years riding bikes that didn't even have a tach... ​​​​​​​

Tach in my HD Speedometer Unit works fine for me.

If you want something less permanent, you could always use an app called RPMitUp. It's a phone app used with a WiFi ODB/OBD II scanner plugged into the bike. Use the app as a tach, tach and speedo, as well as other data like engine temp, gear indicator, etc. Just mount your phone on the bars and you're set.

Here is the link to maxheadflow's RK tach.
It is a beautiful piece of engineering. He is an amazing engineer who humbles himself by calling himself "more of a hack".


https://www.hdforums.com/forum/milwa...o-a-m8-rk.html

1. If you are on a mountain road with steep grades and cliffs, the last thing you want to do is look down at a tach. Look at the road.
2. Feels different too.
3. if your riding cross country, it's called cruise control. The RPM's don't change, much.
4. When you hit the rev limiter, you have gone to far.

After 130,000 miles on my Road King, yes, there have been a few times I was curious about the RPM's but it wouldn't have changed what gear I was in knowing it. I also have over 60,000 miles on my ultras and the only time I have looked at the tach is out of boredom. If I am riding aggressively, the last thing I am going to do is take my eyes off the road.

I admire your quest to get some thing you want. FYI - You don't have an oil pressure gauge on the Road King. OMG! How do you live without that?

I know a couple people doing the same. Just bought a used PV without the license (not married to the bike) and mounted it to the bars with a clamp mount. Works great.

Dynojet is missing a potential market as they could come up with an OEM style gauge and wire it to use their guts... would be simple for them.

Yes. ^^^^^^^ This.

here's a link to an old thread here on the forum that is related to this tach thing

https://www.hdforums.com/forum/dyna-...ml#post9818712

Speedhut says that if HD uses the J1979 protocol then their tach should work by plugging into the can-bus. If I'm reading the thread above correctly, or that post pertaining to J1979 and ODB then there should be a 12v signal coming out of the can-bus port and it should be able to send info to the tach

but Max says it didn't work for him at least at the handlebar.

I'm not adding anything to the conversation, just observations

If the bike uses the same port as a car (don't personally know), that could be a dandy solution for the OP. Gives him the tach up high, as well a zillion other gauges to admire and fret over. Just get an old (cheap/free) android phone and mount it.

You do know that the console wiring harness for a 2014 Road King Police is part number 69200124. Did you also know that the console wiring harness part number for a 2017 Road King is 69200124. So that tells me Speedo 70900260, harness 69200126, bracket 69200731 and tach 67000007 will move the speedo to the handlebars and the tac to the console. I was going to do that my self on my 2014 Road King but the wife got me a phone mount and I use the gauges on my Vance & Hines FP3.

Whatever. Really?

billyo, please look at my update at: https://www.hdforums.com/forum/milwa...king-tach.html

I was able to get an 2018 Low Rider Tach to work on my 2017 Road King. It will probably take me a few more days to get the write up written - I'm color blind so basically I wired it up according to how it wires up to the 18 Low Rider speedometer.

Trying to find all of the threads I read before I tackled this and let everyone know that there is a HD solution....

That sounds great. I have a 67000010 tach in my shopping cart and I will wait for your wiring instructions. Did you tap into the harness or do I need to by the harness that goes with the lowrider tachometer?

im still trying to figure out how he got a $30,000 road king?

I'm waiting on the 2017 Service Manual before I write up the wiring instructions as I'm red/green color blind. I spliced directly into the Road King harness - it is only 4 wires. I have attached a photo of the LowRider Speedo and Tach plug - the 4 wire plug is the tach plug. You do not need the LowRider harness, but you do need gray plug for the tach and it pinned with the 4 wires in the positions shown. I directly tap the Road King wires in the exact position the tach was connected to the LowRider speedo in the black plug pictured.

Hope this helps until I get the details - you should be able to use the 2013 Road King tach harness with the gray plug end, just wire it same as the 2017 LowRider tach.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.hdf...0afcc14cce.png

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.hdf...c17a8fbae4.jpg
here's the Dickster's solution; I think it looks pretty spiffy!

Many more options for a tach on pre-2014 Road Kings....

so what's the latest info on this, did you ever receive the shop manual?

I have a SG, so I have the tach in the fairing, however., the FP3 allows me to view many different gauges and variables on the phone (mounted by my right hand, on my 14" LA Choppers Twin Peaks (read: right in my field of view)) when I choose.

[QUOTE=Kacowboy;17838269]You do know that the console wiring harness for a 2014 Road King Police is part number 69200124. Did you also know that the console wiring harness part number for a 2017 Road King is 69200124. So that tells me Speedo 70900260, harness 69200126, bracket 69200731 and tach 67000007 will move the speedo to the handlebars and the tac to the console. I was going to do that my self on my 2014 Road King but the wife got me a phone mount and I use the gauges on my Vance & Hines FP3.[/QUOTE]

It's a handy tool

The manual came in yesterday - I hope to have the wiring write up this weekend!

Nice simple, and wireless.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.hdf...463ebad1ce.jpg

Got the manual, pretty straight forward:

Road King (RK) Speedo to Low Rider (LR) Tach - positions are the same, here with the correct color codes:

RK position / Wire Color / LR position
2 W/R 2
5 R/O 5
7 BK/GN 7
8 W/BK 8

Note you will also get the Neutral Indicatior, Oil Presure Light, Bright Light Indicator, and Turn Signals displaying on the Low Rider Tach when connected correctly.

I hope this helps others.
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.hdf...f848ce1c1.jpeg

In case anyone is interested, there is a Low Rider tach on ebay that has a beat up bezel for ~$44, pretty cheap if someone wants to play with this..... eBay item number: 254033855572

That is a spectacularly bad bit of advice.
Good luck. Post pics if it works.

5 inch police tach
 

In case you didn't see the other rk tachometer post:
it's also interesting to note that the police tach has no indicator lights (neutral, etc.)
AND the LCD gear position readout changes from: Gear number/RPM value- to the word GEAR 1, GEAR 2, etc. losing the RPM readout on the LCD.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.hdf...0837abda57.jpg

maybe I misread the other post but I thought you cut the wires that provided that signal to the speedo/tach to send to the Police tach

Well the police Tach is supposed to replace your factory speedo and you install the police speedo above the handle bars. The police speedo also has all the lights in it. The reason the police speedo is up higher is so they can just glance down at it instead of moving your head down to see it.

Finally Finished 2018 RK
 

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.hdf...0abdfd38af.jpg
Completed 2018 RK

Here is what the RK police setup looks like I am still thinking about doing this to me 2014.


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.hdf...3d56d47760.jpg

The dealer said the U0157 error code is from the 2 devices (tach/ speedometer) not communicating with each other.
When you wire in a Harley tach (even with proper harness wires and connectors) to the standard RK, the tach takes the rpm data and the speedometer isn't communicating with the tach properly (sharing data). Intermittently, the tach begins with the correct rpm but eventually the tach starts reading and projecting rpm data improperly.

If I could figure out how Max Headflow got his audrino code onto his road king, the devices would (share?) display the same rpm data.

If you look a Max's tach pictures, you can see that the speedhut tachometer and the LCD display show the same rpm.

When we (Me, riotron and others) hook up a tach without the communication software, the LCD display only shows the gear position with no rpm. The 2 devices aren't communicating with each other.

What's weird is that the police Road King has the extra software for the 2 devices to communicate, but the dealer in my area plays dumb and says they can't do anything for me.
I guess I'm stuck.