I have read sometimes that the aux tach wire gets wrapped around a spark plug wire but I am not sure if that is just bare wire or a special sensor type wiring. Shouldnt there be a harness i can tap into though to get an accurate reading? and the volt meter....to get an accurate reading\/ not just to the battery?
Corey - A wee suggestion. Do you have a mate who's close and is OK with this stuff?. Sounds to me as if you're bordering on being a little out of your comfort zone. And it'd be a bit dumb to mess up an R3 for the sake of bodging 26 bucks of gear.
If so buy him a beer and let him do it. If you don't - may I suggest (as you're at least close to the US) that you contact DEcosse on this forum - I'm sure he can knock you up a plug-and play solution. I don't know what's under an R3T tank - but it will also depend on any Triumph accessories that you have already fitted (or may wish to fit in the future) - i.e one could use the heated grips plug - but not if you have heated grips - make sense?
The ideal way is to fit yourself a small auxiliary fusebox which is activated by a live ignition switched circuit. There are loads of switched circuits under the tank - but given your questions I think there's some risk you may struggle a bit to find the correct one.
Using a fusebox gives you a direct unaffected voltage indication - as it should be. If you take a VM feed from (say) tail light circuit you can see fluctuations depending what else uses the circuit.
Most tach's require either an inductive pulse (wire wrapped around High Tension lead) or a feed from a Tach output. Some will do both - some wont - Without documentation, all you can do is TRY. Anybody know if there is a Tacho pulse wire anywhere under an "T" tank?
What's also important - is there any way on the tach to tell it what sort of ignition there is. i.e how many pulses per revolution to expect
Why? - well a 2 stroke engine has one pulse(ignition cycle) per revolution of the engine. If the tach was aimed at scooter owners - this may be the case.
Most 4 stroke M/C engines have a coil per cylinder and may either fire once every 2 revolutions OR one every revolution (using a wasted spark).
Just saying as you may connect it all up and find that tickover registers as about 500, 1000 or 2000 rpm. 1000 is what we want. Again without documentation, all you can do is TRY.
Got a link to the gauges? - maybe there's pictorial evidence to help.