• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

How fast am I gong? A Speedometer question....

Share this page

Yes, a bicycle computer is less expensive (although many are more like $30 or $40) but will take time to come up with good brackets, mounting schemes, wiring, and calibration. A hand held GPS takes no installation and can be used for other purposes.

BTW, handheld GPS units made for hiking can be much less expensive than the car units (especially if it is an older model).

I have a running/cycling/training GPS software that I use on my mobile phone (BimActive). It cost $10 a month, tracks speed, distance and automatically saves to a website. You can even export the activity to Google Earth to view the run/cycle/car trip. Since Europe and the Asian countries are more advanced in the mobile phone features I would be surprised if you don't have something like this. Just a thought.
 
Oh my word, have someone from the states bring one to europe and mail to you?
 
Yeah Jack, I know. My mother sends me stuff sometimes, but she's old and doesn't like being a middleman. Plus the tax man here still takes 42% of whatever is sent in, including shipping costs(if the total price is more than $50). I can get around that by buying from an EU country, but Germany is just as expensive.
 
I don't even have a cell phone... let alone a GPS. To each his own on this.

One reason I like the Sigma bike computers is that they cost about $25 for the BC800 that I used. Not only is the rate scaler programmable for accuracy, so is the odometer value. You can set the odometer to match your current Smiths/Jaeger unit's mileage (or what you want the Smiths to say... or start from zero). To the best of my knowledge the GPS units may not have a dedicated odometer that you can choose to use only with your car. Technology is always changing so maybe now GPS units have multiple distance recording memories... I just don't know.

As far as calibrating the bike computer goes, yes you do have to do some math to account for the final drive but I didn't stop there. Once you have a basic setting, it's good to drive a measured distance on the highway and compare to the distance shown on the odometer. You can then determine a scale factor to multiply your first calibration number by to fine tune the accuracy.

Perhaps I like the challenge but I never saw lengthening the wires and fabricating brackets as impediment to using the bike computer. Obviously the GPS would have been easier. However, I'm not sure where I'd have put a GPS so I could see it (on/near the dash) like the bike computer.
 
But bring it to Europe and mail from an EU country to you? Seems we have folks going to EU countrys all the time.
 
These things are so small by the way that I envisioned making some sort of bracket to mount it to the windshield rod to put it up closer to line of site. Bugsy's speedo bouncea around all over the place and I never have a good clue as to how fast I'm actually going. Come to think of it I need one of these in better half's Mercedes 190E. Speedo not working and it isn't the cable. Either in tranny gear or inside the dash. A ticket last week for 70 in a 55 cost me $130.00. Riding down open road, no traffic around to judge speed, cop with laser, KaChing! Since my right foot is usually getting lots of exercise in Bugsy I really need something more accurate. Majority of my driving is during the day even though Headlight Relays have now made nighttime driving actually pleasant. Still can't hardly read any of my instruments but that's a challenge for taking apart the dash, painting indises of cans white, and finding a substitute for that yellowed plastic lens diffuser stuff in there.
 
Back
Top