Whine

[1887]

I have a whine sound that comes from my front end. I originally thought it was the speedometer drive as it seems to be coming from that area. I took it apart, removed the gear and cleaned it with brake clean. The grease that was in it looked old and dry like candle wax. I regressed it with general purpose moly grease. I also cleaned the cable and lubed it with 75w90. It still whines but only at slow speeds. If I stab the front brakes hard it goes away, strange. When I remove the cable the sound goes away entirely. I have read a bunch of posts on this and many say it is the speedometer itself, it does not sound like it's coming from the speedometer, sounds like it's coming from the drive. Thanks

[trbig]

Unhook the cable and hook a drill to it and see if that's what is whining. Just be careful because the wire will come out of the cable sheath. Then put the bike on centerstand and get front wheel off the ground with either someone holding down on back end or a floor jack to get the front to just clear the ground and spin the wheel to check the speedo drive. Or.. remove speedo cable and go ride it.

[DiverRay]

I also cleaned the cable and lubed it with 75w90.

You need a speedo cable lube for it! It should be LIGHT OIL and Graphite, NOT gear oil. Also, DO spray some silicon lube into the speedo unit. I just spritz a little into the cable connection. Give it a day to settle in, and see if it's still noisy.

[1887]

OK so light oil or graphite spray for the cable? And just silicon spray for the speedometer drive? Thanks

[BA80]

Disconnect the cable from the drive and test ride. Is it gone? No, replace the drive. Yes reconnect the cable to the drive and disconnect the cable at the speedometer and test ride. Is it gone? No, replace the cable. Yes, reconnect the cable to the speedometer. Did the noise come back? Yes, replace the speedo.

[VegasMichael]

This won't help the OP much, but it might help someone looking to solve similar problems down the road ...

I also had a whine from the front end (I actually searched the forums for "whirring" which helped to nail it down to the speedo - prior to that I couldn't figure out what the hell was making that awful noise). I also noticed that the speedo was sometimes bouncing a little at low speed.

Following the advice on some other threads, I disconnected the cable from the speedometer and lubed the cable a little with cable lube, and then fired some silicon into the speedo housing. The whirring (as of today) is substantially diminished (but not gone) and the bouncing appears to have stopped entirely. I imagine I'll need to pull off the speedo one of these days (when it's not 120-degrees in my garage) and clean it out, but for now it's a lot better than it was. I can live with it.

Others have asked if it's necessary to remove the speedo for this. It's NOT. But if you have larger fingers, the speedo cable fastener isn't easy to reach, or to get tools to. It's possible with a little patience, tho.

Finally, there's a pretty great speedo teardown by Steptoe at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eef7FLG2mag - that gives a pretty good idea of how it works and how to troubleshoot.