Okay, this is wondering how many others have seen this more than anything... When I first bought my 03, the speedometer was broken. It would occasionally read something, but usually not. My investigation revealed that the magnet was broken. No big deal, bought a new one and replaced it; problem solved. For a while. Within a week or two, the speedo would spit out random crap when I first started riding for the day, but it would usually end up giving me the actual speed within a couple of minutes. A couple of weeks ago, it was still spitting out random crap 5 minutes later when I got to the gas station to fill up for a ride. After filling up, the bike wouldn't start. The battery didn't even have enough juice to turn it over completely. So I called my wife, she brought me the jumper cables, jumped it and rode home. I stuck my trusty Harbor Freight meter on it and found that the battery was low on power (big surprise). The stator and regulator/rectifier seemed to check out okay, so I didn't worry too much about them at the time. I had a spare battery, so I swapped them and things returned to normal, and the speedo read correctly, even at startup, for a couple of days. So now the speedo will again read crap for the first couple hundred feet of the day, usually getting itself sorted out before the first stoplight. It will read incorrectly while accelerating, but when I let off the throttle, it will usually start reading normal pretty quickly until I come to a stop. When I take off again, I find out if it's going to work or not. So, any thoughts as to what would make the speedo read random insanity (like 186 mph when shifting to 2nd gear) for a couple of minutes, but then settle down for the rest of the day? It doesn't seem to affect anything else, so I'm not terribly worried about it, but if I should be, then I would love to know what to start looking for.
