Speedometer Accuracy

[dui546]

Anybody else having problems with accuracy of the speedometer? Ever heard of Kawasaki motorcycles having speedometers normally off up to 10% below what is indicated on the meter?

Here is the background...I took a quick trip (16 total hours of road time) from Virginia Beach to Pennsylvania over the weekend. The entire journey covered a total of 305 miles on my trip meter.

During my ride I kept up with the flow of traffic and noticed that everyone was "flying." In Pennsylvania I passed through several construction zones that had "your speed" indicator signs and discovered that my speed was always between 5-8 mph below what my speedometer was reading.

I contacted my dealer and informed him of the defective speedometer on my 2007 Nomad and asked to have it replaced. The service manager said that it is normal for the Kawasaki speedometers to be off around 10%. He said that it is always on the down side or below what is read on the meter so you shouldn't ever get a speeding ticket.

I told him that I disagreed that 10% was accurate enough. He said that they are normally more accurate at low speeds and off in the high range. He told me that I needed to give him some data supporting how "off" or "inaccurate" the speedometer was before Kawasaki or he would replace it. He also said that a new one will have the same issues. (????????)

Being a cop, I went to the equipment room and checked out one of our spare hand held directional radar guns. I had my wife ride on the back to check the accuracy of the speedometer by radar throughout the speed range.

Here are the results: Speedometer/Actual Speed by Radar
25/22 (3) 30/27 (3) 45/41 (4) 50/45 (5) 55/50 (5) 60/54 (6) 65/59 (6) 70/62 (8)

That means when the traffic flow was at 80-85 mph by my speedometer they were really only going around 70-75 which is consistent with normal traffic patterns in a 65 mph zone.

I am not happy with this and I am going to insist on having my speedometer replaced. That is...Unless one of you experienced Nomad guys tell me that this is totally normal. I'd be interested in having one of the other police riders check their bikes for general information and comparison data.