[Tom Finch]

Hi, John!
Thanks for your post. It would appear that you probably have not had a lot to do with the GL1500. All of us that have 1500s have gotten used to an honest motorcycle. True enough it is called your father's sedan, but it is a really great machine.

The GL1500 has the most accurate speedometer and odometer of any vehicle I have ever had. The speedo is within a needle width of dead on at any speed up to 100 mph and the odometer is within 1/4 %.

Even those lying speedometers usually have reasonably accurate odomenters.

My latest GL1500, a 93 SE, has now 253,000 on it and just recently I again checked its speedo against the GPS V and it was still dead on up to 105, and it was still within 0.2 miles at 100 miles on the odometer.

The GL1800 will go farther on a tank of gas by quite a bit, but a lot less than the odometer says it does.

I drove my 01 1800 313 miles on a tank and the odometer said 325. I still had a quarter gallon left.

The 1800 is a good bike. My new 04 is even better except the red is not as luxurious as my Pearl Blue was. There is no reason to lie about its performance. It is good enough honestly. I think it is a bad call to dump the 1800 Wing in the mess with the bikes that have to fib about how fast they go. Who cares?

However, if the sign says your exit is 24 miles ahead, you will have passed it a mile back if you use your odometer to tell you when to turn and that is BS as far as I am concerned.

I prefer to cruise at speed limit plus 9. With this speedo it is plus 13 so I just us the GPS. Why have a speedo if it is not reliable?.

When the GPS becomes a standard accessory, Honda will have to straighten up their act because there is no hiding from the accuracy of GPS.

yello3dan, thanks for the follow up on the Avon and Metzler!

 

[Wingman26]

From what I've heard most 1500's had about the same speedo error the 1800 does, I put a calibrated speedometer on my 94 1500 and at 70 mph indicated, the actual speed was 65 to 66, there were a number of riders doing the same thing, with similar results.

I agree with you 100% about the odometers, every bike I have had in the past, the odometers would check out between 1-2%, very close, since the errors were different I would guess the odometers calibration was totally separate from the speedometers, on the 1800 they are both off!

 

[Jim Mathis]

I've had two 1500's. My riding buddy rides an 87 GL1200. When his speedo reads, say, 80, the speedometers on both my 15's read 76.
Now, the speedo on my 18 matches almost exactly with my friends GL12.

Was the speedo more accurate on the 1500's? That was before I got into using a gps, but it sure seems like it to me.

 

[QCWinger]

Speedometer Accuracy

My 2002 GL1800 is off around 4.5 mile per hour. If I ride 65, I am acutally going around 60, 55 - 50 and so on. I asked my dealer and he said his Honda territory rep said 10% was aacceptable. Maybe to him. I wished there was a fix. :lol:

 

[Wingman26]

A few years ago a bunch of the riders on the GWRRA and other boards were complaining about the speedo error on the 1500's, someone came up with the idea about the calibrated speedometers and posted all the information about where to get the speedo and how to install it on a Wing. There were at least a dozen or so riders that I know about, including myself, who did this, with a carefully calibrated digital electronic speedo most were reporting speeds of 65 to 67 mph at an indicated 70 mph, almost identical to the speedo error we see on our 1800's. Keep in mind the exact amount of error found would vary with the brands of tires, the various brands have some variance in their diameter, and that would affect the exact amount of error, just as tire wear can have some effect.