I know this sounds dumb but

When I got my 2000 XL883C, the previous owner had taken the speedo off. Chop, chop. Not pretty. I got the old one back on, wired correctly and everything seems to work ok but on the right side of the gauge, above the key icon, there is a "P" icon. What does it mean? Power? My MoCo manual and the owners manual both say nada. All they talk about is the check engine light which comes on also. Any help clearing up this OCD type question would be appreciated.
:gah:

so when you hooked it back up, were the wires still coming out of the motor, and you just took a spedo and spliced it back. or did they actually pull all the wires, the spedo runs on it's own line and has the conecter mounted with all the other fuses in that little triangle box, from there it goes into the tranny case. so it's hard to say what they did without knowing how it was when you started, as for the p symbol, prob just means power, the motor light comes on when power is on and should go off when bike is running, might be bad wireing or could just be the spedo.

The wires were there but I put in a new section of the harness and a new sensor in the transmission. the only place I spliced was where the wires come off the clip on the back of the speedo unit to the two main harness lines. The one for the sensor and the other electrical line.

just curious, what does it say for the engine light coming on. so if you had to splice in the sensor wires, could you have maybe given the sensor constant power, if it's the same speedo and you hooked every thing back up the way it was, assuming that the connecter was gone also, so the lines from the spedo should run indipendent to the tranny red, black, and white, then you have your other wire harness, you could start by unhooking wires to see what makes what function, but since you sound like you already used a manual, might just be a falty sensor, or it's on because something is wrong. why did it get pulled off in the first place, maybe it did it to the other guy also and was a bad speedo. with the lack of computer gizzmos on the bike the only thing i could really think the light would come on for is if it's running real hot. prob doesn't have anything to do with the tranny, I once put on my new oil tank and put all the lines back wrong and the light never came on. all else fails unhook it and don't worrie about it. if those other wires are going to the key switch which i think they do, then it's prob the constant power thing and you just have it hooked up to the wrong position of the key

Is the speedo specific to Sportsters? If so, I don't recall the Sporster ever being a police bike.

probley means powertrain; a code. does the bike run o.k

Ok, I'll try and answer everyone...the previous owner took off the speedo and the turn signals because he's young and dumb and thought they looked too girlie on the bike. As far as being Sportster specific, I doubt it but the Custom uses only the speedo and no tach. I'll try and use the hook/unhook method and see what I can come up with.
As a side note: I called the stealer in Sioux Falls and talked to one of their service guys who said he didn't know what the "P" meant. He did say he'd be glad to schedule an appointment to work on the bike. I declined. My thought was that if he didn't know now I wasn't going to let him run up a labor bill learning at my expense. Maybe I'll take it to Sioux City if I can't get it straight.
Thanks for the help and if you have any other ideas please let me know.