[WeaponZero]

For those of you who don’t know, the tach face on first gen SV650s is just a sticker that, for whatever reason, is prone to peeling off over time. Mine got to the point where the peeling was interfering with the sweep of the tach needle. I found how-to instructions (http://www.antun.com/sv650tach/) for do-it-yourselfers who wanted to replace the tach face with a fresh one, but due to my lack of mechanical aptitude I decided to let the Suzuki dealership do it anyway. Didn’t trust myself not to screw things up when it came to dismantling and rebuilding my gauge cluster. To my surprise, however, they told me it couldn’t be done and that there was no known fix for it. Surely someone who works on bikes for a living could follow those simple instructions, right?

Discouraged, I took the plunge and did it myself. The process took about 30 minutes and it swapping the tach face with the one I ordered off of that website went off without a hitch. I probably overpaid ($25 for a sticker!) but looking at the end result now with a clean tach face, I feel like it was money well spent.

For the record, the only tools/supplies I needed were a 1/4″ ratchet w/ 10mm socket, 4mm hex key, a utility knife, a screwdriver with interchangeable heads, and some solvent to clean it with. I don’t know why that site is telling me I need all different kinds of socket sizes and half of the tools/supplies it’s saying I needed I didn’t have to use at all.

This is the third do-it-yourself repair I’ve done to the bike so far that turned out well which, considering my poor mechanical aptitude, is a pretty good record so far I’d say. The others were the R/R mod and replacing the rear fender (which I had to do for state inspection reasons–there was a crack in it that was preventing the turn signal stalk from staying in place).

[JackTrade]

Really, a sticker?! Wow…I’d have thought given the overall quality of the SV, it would have something a little more substantial like a lithograph on the face. Any pics before and after?

[WeaponZero]

I can take an “after” pic but all you’ll see is a nice clean white new-looking gauge face. I didn’t take a “before” pic but basically all you would have seen is the edges of the sticker that forms the gauge face flaking off and rolling up at the edges in a way that was interfering with the sweep of the tach needle. The gauge face of the SV650 is just a sticker on a clear plastic plate.

The entire quadrant of the face of my tach that went from 0-4k RPM was just gone, completely. You had to ballpark it if you wanted to guess what RPM you were at below 4k, because it had flaked off completely. The needle wouldn’t sweep past 7k because that was where the edges were beginning to roll up.

[WeaponZero]

The tricky part was getting the gauge to reset at 0 after you put the needle back on. Even if you follow the directions it’s very difficult to line it up exactly where it was when it came off. Took about 5 minutes of taking it off and putting it back on over and over and over again until I finally got it back on to where it was accurate.

[Jeff in Kentucky]

The dealerships would often prefer that you buy a whole new tach from them for hundreds of dollars, instead of the labor to replace the sticker inside and the small chance that the tach glass cover starts to leak in the future.

[Author]

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