New ‘Lockwood’ inlay fitted at last

Right indicator repeaterOn 4th February Jan came back home with a suitcase fair groaning with all manner of goodies. The most eagerly awaited though, was the pair of new inlays from Lockwood International Ltd. So first impressions?

Excellent! From the textured material to the bleed-free printing, from the fit to the light-transmission …. everything was exactly as I’d hoped. The first thing I did was pop one onto a waiting chassis/board and turn on the lighting – did the text and colour match the light channels? Again, perfectly. Now I could relax, prepare the new chassis and get ready to fit one permanently to the dashboard. To fix it in place I decided to use a general-purpose spray adhesive and did a trial run on an old chassis/inlay to make sure it would be suitable. Everything seemed fine and it was certainly good experience to do a dummy run.

Making sure the chassis was grease and dust free was essential, then masking off the light-channels, mounting pegs and anywhere else I didn’t want spray glue to go! A couple of thin coats of adhesive were applied and the inlay fitted 10 minutes later to allow time for the solvents to evaporate. Perfect! It was now ready to be fitted to the circuit board, but first a couple of modifications to the board/processor circuits.

First the eeprom file needed to be updated for the Futura speedo/tacho, then the code in the microcontroller needed updating for the different (voltmeter) needle calibration. At the same time a couple of modifications were made to the circuits based on insights I’d picked up about Arduino boards from the Internet, also the auto-dimming circuit was finally added for the variable back-lighting, a bit of tweaking with the code – and it was all ready to be refitted to the Capo.

So there I was …. on a wind-swept but warm Sunday morning, dashboard in hand and about to see the fruits of a few months work finally come together on the bike. No doubt the code for the auto-dimming will need fine-tuning, but that can be done without removing the dashboard again – and that’s the line in the sand, right there. Once fitted, I shouldn’t have to remove them again anytime soon …. and that’s a great feeling!

I think that about now would be a great time to pause and say thanks to a few folks who have helped me keep the momentum in this little project. Firstly Jan for her patience and for lugging stuff across the continent for me, to Andy (beasthonda) for bouncing ideas around with me and his interest in the project, to Arvdee in the USA without who’s generous donation of a Futura inlay I wouldn’t have had a template.  Last but not least, Clive from Lockwood International for putting the proverbial icing on the cake – thank you all!!!! 😀

5 Replies to “New ‘Lockwood’ inlay fitted at last”

  1. Hello,
    I would really like that same inlay for my Futura if possible
    Can you tell me how to get one??
    I moved from the US to Spain and the kph dial I need to add to my bike.
    I prefer it to be like the factory so it looks right.
    How do I remove the Speedometer needle? Does it just pull off?
    Of course I am nervous to break it 🙂
    Do I need another Back Circuit Board to light up the lights at night?

  2. Looks like it is calibrated to Liters as well???
    Can I do that also?

  3. Hi Dan,
    You can simply swap the mph inlay for the EU Kmh version …. but the odometer would still be counting in miles and the speedo/tacho calibration would be wrong. In short, to do the job properly you need a new kmh inlay and the eeprom on the circuit board needs to be reprogrammed. At the same time you can calibrate the LCD for litres/gallons/centigrade/fahrenheit.

  4. Hello My LCD display is not working and do not know how to fix it, My Aprilia dealer says he needs to change the entire Speedometer console….I don´t want to do that if possible for just the display…Is there any advice you can give?

  5. Hi Dan,
    I’ll reply to your email as a reply here will be quite lengthy …… but the simple answer is that your dealer may well be wrong!

    Regards
    KarlB

Comments are closed.