[Firehawk]

The dash comes nicely packed in a Translogic hard plastic case. After removing the dash, I used it to hold the nuts and bolts I took off the bike for the install. If you got the basic dash kit, you should have a dash unit, two wiring harnesses, one handlebar button assembly, four aluminum mounting bars and a nut/bolt kit. First thing I did was label the harnesses #1 and #2; just made it easier for relating a wire to a specific harness. It will also help to have a good supply of nuts/bolts/zip ties to aid in the installation. (By the way, that's my Translogic Quick Shifter II harness in the third pic

)

 

[Firehawk]

First need to remove the seat…two screws under the seat edge.

 

[Firehawk]

Next, need to remove the upper/lower fairing. Sorry I can’t give you guys better pics (as far as removing the OEM R1 fairings), but my Sharkskinz is only mounted with six screws, no mirrors and no signals. Easy. Remove the fairings before you remove the tank, to keep from accidentally spilling gas on them.

 

[Firehawk]

Remove the tank. First, remove the screw holding the front of the tank down. Lift and support the tank, to gain access to the underside. Remove the two vent lines and disconnect the fuel sending wire (green connector). TURN THE GAS VALVE TO “OFF”. Once turned off, put a rag under the hose to keep excess fuel from dropping onto the engine and wiring. Use a pair of pliars, remove the clamp and pull the hose off. Last, remove the rear long bolt and lift the tank away. You do not need to remove the small side panels (98/99) to remove the tank.

 

[Firehawk]

Remove the airbox. First, remove the Philips screws from the airbox lid. Don’t forget the center screw (where the drill is). Using an electric drill saves TONS of time. Remove the cover and filter. (yea, I know the forward tab is broken on my airbox…)

 

[Firehawk]

Pop the velocity stacks off by pulling on them gently. Now, loosen the carb clamps under the airbox (total of four), remove the two vent lines at the rear underside of the box, and lift the box off. I can’t because I have a Flo-Commander installed, so I have to bungee it up to gain access to the carbs.

 

[Firehawk]

Be sure to cover the carb mouths to keep debris out.

 

[Firehawk]

Pull the two pins holding the ignition coil panel, to gain access to the dash wiring and connector. You can completely remove the panel by pulling out the four plug wires and disconnecting the coil connector.

 

[Firehawk]

Locate the white connector on the main harness going to the dash. Pull it up, and prepare to go to work!

 

[Firehawk]

Time to mount the dash on the bike. Mounting it was more difficult that I thought it was going to be. The two major problems are that the dash is universal, so the holes come nowhere close to matching anything on the OEM R1 fairing stay and the wiring harness coming out of the dash is right in the center….not offset like the OEM R1 dash. You will have to make modifications to the fairing stay with a dremel or other applicable tool to get the harness centered. I scribed the area to be modified, and used my dremel to ground it out. Yea, it’s not beautiful, but good enough for government work.

 

[Firehawk]

On the back of the dash, there’s four mounting holes (two upper/two lower). The two lower ones did fall over the plate on the fairing stay, so I simply marked the location of the holes-to-be by slicing off two small lengths of tubing, putting them in the holes on the dash with ½ inch sticking out, and dabbing the ends with red paint. Put the dash up to the fairing stay and mark the holes. Then drill out the holes. I had to use different length screws than what came with the kit, because I didn’t have to use the aluminum bars to mount the bottom.

 

[Firehawk]

Mounting the top two holes was a little more difficult. The holes fell outside the edges of the fairing stay flange, so you have to find a way to use one of the aluminum bars to get a hole over the flange surface. The bars have a series of holes and slots. I found a 4mm countersunk bolt in my stash, and countersunk one of the holes on a mount bar so that it could sit flush against the back of the dash. I then trimmed off one end of the bar, and put the upper two mounting screws in. Then, you have to mark the hole location, and drill away. Last, since the bottom of the dash sits on the fairing stay, I put a bit of foam cushioning underneath of it (orange padding you can see behind the dash). Translogic stresses to isolate the dash from vibration. Every little bit helps.

 

[Firehawk]

Now the dash is mounted. Next big step is to wire the dash. At this point, you need to make a decision where to wire in the dash harnesses. Translogic suggests cutting the OEM harness off at the main white connector going to the OEM dash (18 wires), and wiring in there. I decided to keep the connector, in case I ever wanted to buy a new harness and rewire it back to OEM. You also need to make a decision if you’re going to make this a “race harness” by cutting out all the turn signal, headlight, temp, ect. wiring. Keep in mind that by leaving that white connector intact, you can go back later and just plug and play a new harness and make everything OEM again.

 

[Firehawk]

There’s two dash harnesses. I labeled them #1 and #2 to ease confusion. Harness #1 contains no less than FOUR black wires. Unfortunately, I did confuse them during installation, and it contributed to a few problems. There is one LARGE black wire with a crimped eyelet on the end. I assumed it was the ground wire…WRONG. It’s the temp sensor. The negative wire that runs to the battery is a much smaller wire with a crimped eyelet. The black wire that runs to RPM/tach has no connector on it, so that made it easy to tell. There’s wires for an optional retro-fit speed sensor (available from Translogic, in the pic below), but the R1 already has a speed sensor that can be tapped into. These can be shrink wrapped and taped up.

Harness #2 has an optional tach wire for CDI ignition systems (yellow). NO model of the R1 has a CDI ignition system (or any other motorcycle to my knowledge), so I clipped it short/shrink wrapped to keep down on the confusion. The harness also has two orange ‘utility’ wires that will simply light up an outboard LED when activated. I used the #1 orange wire for FUEL and the #2 orange wire for LOW OIL indications. The white oil pressure wire in the harness is useless on the R1, as the oil sensor only senses low oil, not oil pressure.

 

[Firehawk]

Here comes the fun part….splicing in wires. I decided to cut off the wires I needed about 6 inches after the white connector. That gave me a little fudge room to work with. Don’t forget to drop a sleeve of shrink wrap on before soldering each wire! (I HATE electrical tape). Here’s the basic association table (Word document below the pics....):

 

[Firehawk]

Here’s another problem I had….if you’ve installed a Sam’s Servo Sub, there’s two wires that you need to solder TOGETHER to close the RPM loop, or the tach will start going tango again. They are the Blue/Yellow wire and the Green/Yellow wires. Solder them, and cover in shrink wrap.

I ran the ground right up to the negative side of the battery (probably overkill…I could have spliced it into the headlight negative wire).

I bolted the temp sensor eyelet to the forward-most starter bolt, closest to the cylinder heads. I want to get it closer to the engine head, but I have yet to find an M6 bolt on the head (other than the carb sync screws under the carbs…not touching those). Also, be sure to keep the sensor mounted AWAY from the headers, as the extra heat can generate false readings.

 

[Firehawk]

Now that the harness is all wired in, next step is to route the handlebar button. This is where I discovered another mistake. I got the kit without the bracket for the button. GET THE BRACKET. I ended up rigging something together, but it just took more time and effort. The button mounts on the left bar, just inside of the grip. The button should be easily accessible by thumb if you want to use it as a lap timer. Route the wire down and into the engine area, and clip into the harness.

 

[Firehawk]

Finally, loom all the wiring back together and reinstall the zip ties. Turn on the ignition and ensure that the dash is getting power. Also, push the button AFTER turning on the ignition, and ensure that you see the countdown “05, 04, 03, 02”. If so, the button checks out. Put the tank, fairing and seat back on. DON'T FORGET TO TURN THE GAS BACK ON!!!!!

 

[Firehawk]

The factory presets show Celsius for temp and KPH for speed. You will be able to change these in the SETUP mode.

VERY IMPORTANT! You enter the setup mode by holding the button, switching on the ignition, waiting for the countdown to get to “00”, and release the button. Wait 10 seconds (a MUST) and start the bike. DO NOT go into setup with the bike off, and begin messing with tach/shiftlight/mph/gear settings. I did that, and it royally confused the display. The instruction booklet does a very good job of describing how to program the display, but be sure you read it several times and understand what they’re telling you to do BEFORE you do it.

Three of the regimes (mph/kph, gear, and shiftlight point) NEED TO BE DONE ON A DYNO. Once dash installation is complete, make an appointment with a local dyno, and get it setup correctly.

 

[Firehawk]

That’s all…go out and enjoy your new dash!

Here are my directions in word format, for easier reading....