I PUT APPLE CARPLAY ON MY VINTAGE '80S HONDA MOTORCYCLE, AND HERE'S HOW I DID IT

No precious vintage Honda V4s were harmed in the installation process.

One of the coolest things about the motorcycle community is that there are so many different flavors of enthusiasm you can have.

Maybe you're into ultramodern tech, and only the latest and greatest will do (in which case, good luck to both you and your wallet). But what if that's not you, though? Say you're into bikes that are a little (or a lot) older, but you'd still like a useful taste of modernity.

What do you do if, for any reason, you don't find yourself wanting to march into your local new bike showroom and plonk down thousands of dollars for something with a fancy TFT dash and a ton of electronics? Oh, and at the same time, you still want modern conveniences like Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, and maybe a dashcam to document any sketchy traffic situations while you're out roaming your local roads?

Enter the Chigee AIO-5 Lite.

Before I could review it, though, I had to first decide a) what bike I was going to install it on, and b) actually install it. The good news is, Chigee provides fairly clear instructions in the box, which is a thing that not everyone seems to do anymore these days. So that part is nice.

Now, to be totally honest, I find wiring and electrical situations to be more than a little intimidating. Even though I'm the type of person who likes taking stuff apart, and who has no problem taking apart small electronics (like video game systems) to clean them out and maybe reflow cracked solder, that's not exactly the same thing.

Don't ask me why my brain is OK with one and not the other.

My very kind (and very electrically- and electronically adept) partner knows this about me, so one day while I was sitting at my computer and doing the typing part of my job, he took the task of installing the Chigee AIO-5 Lite on my chosen bike into his own hands.

What's the bike, you ask? That's right. It's my 1985 Honda VF500F Interceptor. The one I've kept mostly pretty stock, except for upgrading the brake lines to braided stainless steel, adding Brembo rotors, and installing Vesrah brake pads to help it stop a bit better than it did. And it does!

This Installation Is Easy And Completely Removable

Now, before the purists start yelling about how we could desecrate such a fine piece of 1980s Honda history, we had one very simple guiding principle for this installation. It had to use the bike's existing structures.

No drilling, no double-sided tape that might wreck the clearcoat on the paint; nothing that couldn't be easily reversed and leave no trace behind if we took it off. 

Would we succeed? I'm here to tell you that a) the installation part of the project is complete, and also that b) yes, we've already succeeded. 

My partner took notes on everything he did, and also took extensive photos to document it all. The Chigee AIO-5 Lite kit comes with the control unit, front and rear cameras, GPS antenna, a selection of 3M VHB adhesive pads, a handlebar mount and adapter rings to fit three handlebar sizes (22mm, 25mm, and 28mm), zip ties, electrical tap connectors, and a few different tools.

Besides the security Torx wrenches you might expect with something like this, I'd like to pay special attention to the very unusual little screwdriver included in this box. The tip is unlike anything either of us has ever seen. Here, take a look.

What's this strange driver used for? It turns out that it's what you need to access the MicroSD card slot into which you'll need to install a card to record your dashcam footage. There's a USB-C port in this location as well, under a weatherproof rubber cover on the bottom of the Chigee control unit that sits wherever you've chosen to mount it on your handlebars.

So, in other words, you don't want to lose this driver, because good luck finding a replacement. In fact, I'm not even sure what to call its unique shape. If you can identify this shape, please let me know in the comments.

Now, take a look at my VF500F's cockpit and see what you see. What do you notice about the bars?

That's right; they're clip-ons. Not a single standard handlebar unit. With that in mind, how do you mount something like the Chigee AIO-5 Lite (or anything else you'd want to mount on a handlebar, for that matter)? 

Chigee thought of this and provided a mirror mount (available separately) for the unit. But thinking carefully, we came up with what we thought was a more elegant mounting solution: A reservoir mount.

The VF500F has a hydraulic clutch, so you'll notice in the photo above that there are two reservoirs to choose from. I'd also been testing a Quad Lock reservoir mount, so we decided to repurpose the cool little bracket from that unit to mount the Chigee on the VF500F. 

Look how perfectly that worked!

It's pretty solid, too. And extremely luckily, the two little M5 screws connecting the Chigee mounting hardware's pivot arm to its handlebar clamp were the same size as what Quad Lock had used, even down to the 0.8 thread pitch (if you can believe it). It's almost like they wanted to form Voltron!

My partner then basically followed the existing wiring loom on the VF500F to run the various wires to where they needed to go. Power comes from the bike's battery, and the included leads with ring connectors and integrated 3-amp fuse holder connect directly to the battery terminals.

There's also a third lead (yellow, as compared to the positive red and negative black leads) that's meant to connect to a switched circuit. This allows the Chigee unit to automatically power up when you turn the bike on, so the dashcam functionality is always automatically engaged as soon as you fire up the bike. 

This is what the tap cons included in the Chigee box were intended to facilitate. But, if you remember the one rule we had for this installation, it's that we didn't want to modify the VF500F in any way that couldn't easily be reversed.

No permanent modifications.

Poking around on the VF500F, there seemed to be a spare, unused female bullet connector located under the front cowl, behind the headlight. After a quick multimeter test, my partner discovered it was a 12-volt switched connection, ideal for what we were trying to do. He then used a butt splice to extend that yellow lead from the Chigee up to this circuit, to which he crimped on a male bullet connector and neatly plugged it in. And it worked perfectly, powering on as expected with the turn of the ignition key.

Next, it was time to mount the rear and front cameras. The rear camera understandably came with a longer lead, thankfully. My partner then found a hole that Honda had apparently drilled in the little grab handle on the rear cowl of the VF500F, where a rare accessory luggage rack was meant to attach.

My bike didn't have this luggage rack when I got it, and I haven't ever tried to obtain one since I've owned it. But that hole was useful, so my partner instantly started checking his spares to see if he had any hardware that would work for this situation. He's the kind of person who keeps spare hardware (neatly labeled and tucked away), just in case we need it years down the line. More often than not, he's right; we may not need that bracket today, but it could absolutely come in handy in a couple of years.

The rear camera is now on the bike's grab handle, thanks in part to Honda's luggage rack hole. Thanks, 1984 Honda VF500F design team!

Then it was time to find a good place for the front camera to hang out.

Chigee's instructions want you to mount it as close to the center of your bike as possible, but the solution we ended up finding involved one of Honda's very chunky, very '80s turn signals. Narrow zip-ties fit perfectly into the grooves baked into Honda's turn signal design, so the mounting point ended up looking nice and tidy while still being very simple to remove if we want in the future.

With the control unit wired in, and both front and rear dash cams properly mounted, there was just one piece of the puzzle left to install: The GPS antenna.

Chigee wants this part to be placed, in their words "as far as possible" from the main control unit. At the same time, it's also supposed to occupy some kind of Goldilocks space that's not too close to the cameras, or the cables, or under metal, or anything that might potentially obstruct its satellite reception. Despite all this, they include a rather short cable to work with.

Thankfully, the GPS antenna is now tucked away neatly, just above the headlight and slightly behind the upper headlight cowl, which is plastic and therefore non-obstructive. 

Even in the garage, the unit displays clear satellite reception, so this placement of the GPS antenna seems to have worked.

How Is It To Use?

First, a brief overview of what it does.

The AIO-5 Lite is meant to put a host of modern conveniences at your fingertips. There are the dashcams, of course. The main control unit also has both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto functionality baked in, so you can hook it up to your phone (and also use the included USB port to keep your phone powered up while riding, as long as you have somewhere to stick your phone nearby).

It can also display navigation provided by your phone, let you control streams from your favorite music streaming services, and more. One optional accessory that Chigee also sells is tire pressure monitor sensors (TPMS) that can hook up to this unit.

All in all, it's an intriguing upgrade for folks who might be interested in some of these functions, but who love their older machines and may not necessarily want to shell out new-bike money to get them.

As for how the Chigee AIO-5 Lite unit works on my 1985 Honda VF500F Interceptor, you're going to have to wait a bit for the full review. It needs a good carburetor service, which is something I'll be tackling myself (my partner wants nothing to do with this part of the VF500F).

So stay tuned.

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2024-09-06T11:41:08Z dg43tfdfdgfd