Venture Royale upgrade for Lowrance iWay 500C

After too many years having no motorcycle, while raising a family of 4 kids, I finally broke down and bought the bike of my dreams.  Or was it a mid life crisis?  Anyway, on June 1, 2005, I bought a 1986 Venture Royale that was in really nice condition.

But something was wrong with this picture.  It was a great motorcycle, even after 19 years, but a Cassette to take my tunes along?  That had to change.

I also wanted to resume taking some long trips. Maybe a return to the Blue Ridge Parkway, and see what all the fuss is about at the “Tail of the Dragon”.  But to do that, I wanted something a bit more advanced than paper maps that get all tattered up, and don’t tell me where I am when I’m really lost.

So after doing some research over the winter, I decided to buy a Lowrance iWAY 500C GPS with a 10Gig partition on the hard disk for MP3 music files.  I found one on Ebay for a great price.  Now all I had to do was to mount it on the bike, and connect it to the Mitsubishi sound system.  I figured I could do it.  I had the tools to do the mechanical mount side, and my Dad is a genius with Electronics.  So read on, and see how I made out.  Hope it helps you turn a first generation venture into something that the 2^nd generation owners will be envious of.

Mounting the iWay on a Venture Royale.

The iWAY comes with a RAM motorcycle mount, but I couldn’t figure out a good way to use it on a Venture Royale.  It’s meant for mounting to a 1” tubular handlebar, which the first gen doesn’t have.  I wanted to mount the unit above the gas tank for visibility, and to avoid adding any mass to the steering.  The iWAY is much heavier than some units, due to the hard disk drive and very large screen.

So I came up with my own mounting bracket system that attaches to the fairing under the battery cover (fake gas tank?). 

This is a bracket that attaches to the fairing, one on each side.  It is on top of the faring electronics covers, with the rubber battery cover pad on top.  You can see 10/32 weld nuts on the vertical side of the bracket.  After the battery cover is re-installed, the top GPS mount bracket will screw into these weld nuts.

Here is the top bracket mounted to the side brackets, on top of the battery cover.

The top mount bracket follows the contour of the battery cover with about ½” clearance.   The top bracket has a bit of flex in it so that the GPS bounces slightly over big bumps, isolating the hard drive based unit from severe pot holes and vibration. 

Rather than using the Lowrance provided motorcycle mount which mates with the clip on the unit, I bought a RAM RAP-326MU “Ezy-Mount Quick Release Male Plate on Raised Diamond Base” that mates with the existing clip on the GPS.  To position the GPS at an appropriate viewing angle, the clip is mounted on a wedge.

The RAM clip works OK, but I was a bit worried about it failing, causing who knows what calamity while riding, or the unit being easily stolen when left unattended.  To fix this, I came up with a simple steel bracket that mounts to the GPS, between the heat sink and the RAM female clip.  This bracket is bent to mate against the wedge bracket.  A simple padlock secures the GPS to the bike mount bracket.  I put 3/8”grommets in both the GPS bracket, and the bike mount bracket for the padlock loop to go through, and Velcro between the padlock and the bike mount bracket to keep the padlock from vibrating and disturbing the music.

With the GPS mounted in it’s bracket, the handlebars clear the unit at both right and left lock.

Here are some diagrams with dimensions of the main bracket parts.  I didn’t have access to a shear or brake to cut and form the pieces.  I used my table saw with an abrasive cut off blade to cut up an old computer case for the bracket pieces, and used my MIG welder to attach the weld nuts to the fairing brackets, and the wedge to the battery cover bracket.  Simple nuts and bolts would also work fine.

Now for the Electronics side of the story.

I had no desire to keep the old cassette unit it the bike.  So I removed the unit from the original radio shell, and added my own cover plate. 

Normally, ejecting a cassette turns on the radio tuner, and inserting a cassette turns off the radio tuner, and turns on the cassette.  A switch is used to replace this functionality.  The red switch is used to turn on/off the radio tuner.  It isn’t integrated into the GPS, so if you want to listen to the radio, you have to turn off the MP3 music if the iWAY is turned on.  If the iWAY tells you about your next turn, it will be heard above the radio level, depending on how loud you set the iWAY audio and speech settings.

This is the inside view of where the cassette used to be.  The beige cable that used to plug into the cassette, now plugs into a female 8pin DIN connector on a small prototype circuit board.  The circuit board has a bracket for two RCA audio connectors for right/left audio, and a little PCB jack that feeds the red radio on/off switch.

Here is the design for the cassette replacement chassis.

This is the electrical diagram for the connection to the Mitsubishi radio unit.

I got the 8 pin DIN PCB receptacle from Electrosonic in Toronto.   The prototype PCB and tuner ON/OFF switch and Audio Ground Loop Isolation transformer came from Radio Shack.

It’s fairly simple to connect the GPS to the bike’s switched accessory power connectors.  Front of the fuse panel on top of the battery.  There are two screws, left is ground, and the other is +12V. 

It’s a bit of a job to feed the wires into the fairing area.  You might remove the top left fairing cover that holds the speaker and radio pieces to get clear access to the cable routing used by Yamaha.

In my prototype unit, I found that the Mitsubishi amplifier seems to pick up a lot of electronic noise from the GPS.  To reduce this to acceptable levels, I used a Radio Shack Nexxtech 2700054 ground loop isolator transformer.

I think that the radio RF noise filter in my 20 year old bike is not what it once was.  The radio power filter is mounted in the left fairing just below the speaker.  I suspect that the capacitors have dried out, and have lost their original capacitance.   Even while listening purely to the Mitsubishi radio, I hear some static at low volumes from either the ignition, or the voltage regulator.  Anyone else have a similar experience?  Any one who has owned a 1^st generation Venture Royale from new have any experience in this area?

So what’s next?

Over this winter, I plan to re-do the electronics portion, and design a professional grade circuit board with built in audio isolating transformers.  I’d also like to try and find some connector pins for the Mitsubishi amphenol like connectors.  There are 5 spare positions in the connectors that the radio plugs into when connecting to the bike wiring.  This would allow the removal of the radio for washing purposes without having to remove the RCA audio connectors to the iWAY audio wiring.

Overall, I think I succeeded in my project.  The iWAY MP3 player provided endless hours of our favorite tunes on a few trips this past summer.  The GPS was great at keeping me informed of where we were, and where to go.  With the help of the Venturers web site, I’ve been able to do all the maintenance and mods to my bike that keeps it running great.  I hope that you enjoy your 1^st generation Venture as much as I do mine.

If you find this project interesting and want a complete set of parts, let me know.  If there is enough interest, I might be convinced to build a kit.

John C. Das

Venturers “jcd1986vr”

john.das@sympatico.ca 

Last update: 11:17 AM Sunday, October 22, 2006

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