Fitting a “Cheetah” Motorcycle Alarm to America/Speedmaster

There’s a company called “Cheetah” in Singapore that makes very well priced alarms for motorbikes. I found them for sale on Ebay at about 1/10 the price of the Triumph OEM alarm. They’re sold buy a guy who runs an Ebay store called “AutoTec Austomotive”… he’s been around for several years and I’ve dealt with him twice very happily. The alarm will do just about everything the OEM one does, including movement sensor, current sensor (to detect hotwiring and regular ignition), status LED, and ignition kill. It comes with two waterproof remotes and even has an extra “auxiliary” wire that you can use with switches (not included) to protect things like hard bags. There’s also an uprated model that has an intelligent tilt sensor included. It fits up to our bikes very easily, however it doesn’t have the standard connector so you’ll have to cut the bike’s alarm connector off and solder directly – which is more secure anyway.

Things you'll need: wire cutters, soldering iron & solder, narrow heatshrink tubing, black electrical tape, cable ties, general tools for removing tank etc. Optionally you might also want to get hold of a mercury tilt switch (unless you ordered the cheetah with the intelligent tilt switch module, in which case you'll have to work out where to mount that yourself - I didn't get it), or even some magnetic reed switches to protect your hard bags.

Mounting diagram to suit Air Injection pump mounting points - use original AI mounting bolts.

Mounting the thing: First thing you'll need to do is find somewhere to put the alarm. The best place I found was under the tank, below the frame, mounted from the mounting points for the Air Injection pump (I assume you've removed it already? If not this is a good excuse to do so.) It's out of sight, protected from tampering by the engine, and fairly well protected from the weather too. I bought a small piece of aluminium window frame from a junk shop for a dollar or so, then cut and ground it till it was an "L" shape (viewed from the end) as long and wide as the alarm module (about 100mm x 50mm I think from memory) and the short leg of the "L" was about 30mm. I drilled two holes in it to fit the mounting bolts through, and a 3rd hole halfway between them right on the corner of the "L". Then I used some double-sided tape to stick the alarm module to the bracket and put a cable tie through the 3rd hole and around the module for safety. Then just remove the seats & tank and bolt it into place.

Believe it or not, that's the hardest part done.

LED & bezel mounted in centre of console. Note switch for driving lights in standard LED position.

Wiring it up: When you get the alarm you'll find it has a small bunch of wires coming out of it to a socket, and a seperate wiring harness with two in-line fuses and a plug on one end. You won't need the wiring harness but you'll be using the two fuses holders. Cut the socket off the wires coming from the alarm module. The wires should still be long enough to reach the alarm plug on the bike.

If you haven't found the alarm plug on the bike yet, it's on the right hand side of the frame, near the seat. It has 12 black wires feeding into it, and a socket already plugged into it with two small black wires, each one looping from one pin in the socket to another pin. These are for the two engine disable circuits. If you remove the socket you'll see it's only got 4 pins in it. If Triumph had been nice enough to include all 12 pins we could have used the original socket, but since they didn't we'll have to cut the plug off the bike. DON'T do it yet, or you'll end up in a world of trouble, coz all the wires are black! (it's a security thing). If you unplug the socket and look closely you'll see all the pins are numbered  1-12. I'll use those numbers as an easy reference.

Find a neat way to route the alarm's wires to the bike's wires and cut them to about 50mm longer than you think you'll need. Cut the red & pink wires about half that long. Cut the fuse holders off the unused wiring harness that came with the alarm leaving enough wire to solder, then using heatshrink to insulte the joins solder them to the red & pink wires coming from the alarm and cut them to the same length as the other wires. There's a black loop of wire coming from the alarm module. This is your ignition disable - cut it in the middle to form two black wires, and run them with the rest. I'll refer to these "black wire loop 1" and "black wire loop 2". Be VERY careful not to get them confused with the normal black wire coming from the alarm. Cut the LED off leaving about 100mm of wire (we'll use the bike's wiring later to get the LED to the console). Now we'll cut one wire at a time from the bike's socket and heatshrink & solder it to the matching wire from the alarm BEFORE cutting the next wire. They go in this order:

As you can see from the table, wires 3 & 5 need to be connected together. This is the second circuit in the Triumph alarm's "engine kill" which stops the starter solenoid from closing (disabling the starter motor). The other circuit (wires 1 & 2) kill the power to the ignition module. I decided that if you had ignition and no starter you could still push-start the bike, but having a starter with no ignition wouldn't do the thief any good, so I chose to use that circuit.

Run the antenna wire along the length of the frame and use tape or cable ties to hold it in place. Mount the LED in the hole in the console using the supplied clip and strip the two wires back enough to solder them. Cut off the plug in the console's harness for the LED (it's the one with the orange and grey wires) and then arm the alarm (siren should chirp once and lights should flash once). Strip the console's wires and hold the LED wires in place against them. If the LED doesn't flash connect it the other way round. When you determine the correct position disarm the alarm, then solder and heatshrink the wires together.

Negative Input Trigger: Your alarm has a yellow wire coming out of it. If the alarm is armed and this wire is connected to earth (negative) the alarm will go off. This is very useful as you can protect other accessories with it. I see you have hard bags on your bike - you might want to mount some concealed push switches, or magnetic reed switches inside the bags connected to this wire so that if a thief opens your bags the alarm will sound. I used it connected to a mercury tilt switch that I taped to the bottom of the frame so that if the bike is lifted off the sidestand the alarm will sound. You can even connect multiple switches to the same wire. In fact I'm planning on purchasing a cargo trailer to tow behind my bike shortly and am thinking about how to use the alarm to protect that too!

Finishing Touches: At this point you should be able to test the alarm, and adjust the shock sensor. I put mine to maximum sensitivity and haven't had a false alarm yet, but if I lift and drop a saddlebag it'll set the alarm off. If it's all working as it should use the roll of tape to wrap up the wiring harness so it looks like the original harness, but leave the two fuse holders exposed. Use cable ties to fix it in place neatly, with the fuse holders tucked up under the tank but accessable. This is not a great security risk, because if the fuses are removed the bike still won't start, although the alarm won't sound. If there's a problem with the alarm in future, remember that it has THREE fuses, the two in the wires, and the bike's original alarm fuse (fuse number 4) in the fusebox. Once you're happy with it, reassemble your bike and enjoy knowing it'll still be where you left it when you come back. :)

The mercury tilt switch I used - it's mounted on the underside of the frame with double-sided tape.

Red LED with chrome bezel - used to replace original LED for mounting in tank console.