
The dash on the XT has been bodgy ever since i got it – the tacho was damaged, the backlights only worked after a shoddy wiring repair, and the turn signals light doesn’t work. After putting on the motard wheels, the speedo is out too, so I decided it was time to upgrade to a Trail Tech Vapor speedo.
I got the kit from an Australian eBay seller, BigPigMCA, who sells them for AU$170 delivered. Pretty competitive with sellers in the US, and it arrived in around three days, much quicker than getting it from the US.
The first part of the installation was fabricating a mount. I made this mounting plate from 2mm aluminium checkerplate. Pretty rough, but does the job and is fairly hidden. I made the bends by hand and annealed them with a butane blowtorch. Shaping was done freehand with a die grinder and files. Probably the trickiest parts was shaping the top to fit the underside of the headlight cowl, and making the spacers for the mounting bolts – since I don’t have a lathe I had to roughly cut them to length then file them down till they fit.



Mr Dash is happy to accept your Vapor

I pulled the speedo cable off and covered the drive output in tape. I plan on machining up a spacer to replace it at some point in the future. With the tacho cable, i’ve just covered up the cable end. I intend to remove the tacho drive and install a blanking plate. The previous model XT6 (1990-1995) doesn’t have a tacho, and apparently it will fit mine (1996) no issue. If I had a lathe I’d make one myself, but again, sadly I don’t.
Here’s a picture of the tacho drive:

Below is a parts diagram of the cylinder head from a 1990-1995 XT600. Part 24 is the blanking plate I intend to use (so long as it isn’t ridiculously expensive, which there is a fair chance it is)

I wired up the tacho sensor inductively, using five wraps of the positive lead around the spark plug lead, and the negative tied to ground on the chassis.


The speedo pick was a bit of a bodge – I’ll be getting an EBC oversized disc (hopefully!) in a few weeks. Doing a proper mount would have been a pain in the arse, so I figured i’d do a bodgy mount until then.

I didn’t install the temp sensor, as it is unfortunately the wrong size – DR650’s must use a smaller spark plug. I am going to try to find another spot to mount it (oil tank?)
Here’s the finished product:

Still to do:
- Replace speedo drive with spacer
- replace tacho drive with blanking plate
- wire up dash lights (high beam, neutral, turn) using LEDs and mount on dash.
- proper speedo pickup mount once new 320mm disc is installed