Instrumentation? Who needs Instrumentation???!!!

Tachometer enemas afoot. Tried a VDO but it was a NO-GO. Stupid sensor pickup was made for a car (or a harley), but not a bike.

Buckled and went for a digital Trailtech; its ubiquity and ease of use should make this work okay. But, but, but, that means removing the existing sheet alu "dash" Banke cut for an analog instrument, and with it the ignition switch. So I had to figure out a way to handle the ignition-kill circuits, leading me bypass the use of a key and just use a simple on/off switch approach. I saw this application of a ubiquitous hardware store toggle switch on the wrenchmonkees website and decided that it was kind of my speed:



Mine's quite uglier, but within reach, handling lights-on, and KILL. The key ignition was kind of a joke anyway. one could have easily cross wired the bike and made off with it. The only real test of security is whether a person could actually kickstart the temperamental engine:





For now? No instruments, and who needs em? I'm not raising hell on the highways. I'm putzing around in the hills and if someone asks, i'll just say it's about as fast as i want.

Ran out of gas today, tho. Felt the engine hiccuping at the top of grizzly peak, so luckily, just a long coast down the hill for a few lumps of petrol. I guess an odo would be helpful...

Here's a wiring diagram from a previous post on how the kill/ignition circuits look.

More Tacho Fail

I give up. Not sure how I could have fried the refurb tacho like this; wish I could have taken a photo of its guts before returning way back when I initially had a problem -- I'm betting those burn scars were always there. Can't imagine that I fried it a second time on install. Much ado about nothing. Guess I should just go looking for a VDO.

From their Tech Support

Hi Adam,

Sorry for all the troubles we are having here. We got the tacho back. It has blown the internal fuse again. Unfortunately it appears to have got some heat into it before it went. I have attached a picture of the board. When we went to replace the fuse the part on the circuit board it solders to came off, form the heat. Unfortunately there is no repair for this. I the picture this is the area in front of the harness plug right side.

As far as the gauge we sent that somebody stole from you mail. Not sure what to do there as cant really blame you for that.

Kind Regards,
Dan

More Boxes

OK, well I thought I was done making the favor box design but Sarah and I came across an old wine box at curbside while jogging two weeks ago in Emeryville. It was a 6 bottle, vintage 2000, who knows what per bottle, sad Robert Mondavi collaboration with Moulton-Rothchild in Opus One. Sad because of everything that Mondavi means to Napa valley but I'm not gonna hop on the bandwagon and throw turds at the family, I'll leav that to the oenophile hens out there. Still love the moniker and also getting handy with old wood*; turning it into something else. Not sure who'd want them but they're finished here:



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* Did I just write that???

tach attack!

Well, the repaired tach didn't work, so the kind fellows at SPA sent me another one in the mail a few weeks ago. I never saw the new one. I explain below in the letter enclosed in the parcel for the old tach that I'm sending back today:

Hey Dan - Adam here - sending back the old tach. Maybe you can find out if there's something wrong with it.

We talked about you sending a replacement a few weeks ago, and that I should send this broken one back to Indianapolis once I got the new one. Directly after our last email chat, I received an email notification from USPS tracing the replacement parcel's route to me, and I just assumed it would show up at my doorstep early the following week. So I waited some days and figured it would be at my doorstep when I got home from work some evening. However, more days passed, and I then went back and referred to the USPS tracking number; this time it claimed that the delivery had been made a few days earlier! I can only assume someone must have seen the delivery next to our front door from our street and decided to steel it. How unforgivably stupid of me to be so trusting. Actually, we had some other person try to break into our house through the back window a few weeks earlier, so I should have been aware enough to have the parcel shipped to my office. Doubly stupid.

At this point, I've cost the world two beautiful SPA tachometers from my own foolhardiness. It's an awful shame. I must apologize as I think you all have done what you could, but some people are simply beyond reasonable help and must be culled for crop fertilizer. I've returned my human-viability card to the proper authorities and will be reporting into the nearest DMV for organ harvesting. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Adam Tracy

New Tacho On....The...Waaaaayyyyy!!!

but until then, 'tis boxes, boxes, boxes...my Inner Stalin likes to line them all up and play "Tanks rolling thru Moscow"




A little tongue oil and here they line up:

tach fail!

well, tried patching in the refurbished tach, and it appears to not be working. doing some back and forth with SPA in Indianapolis but here's the pudding

got my tachometer back!

...but too absorbed in how to come up with an easy to produce lid for the favor boxes. Was trying to use a transverse dowel peg to form a sort of "cleat" that would hook up to a trench dug into the interior sides of the box with a chisel or my dremel. That lid appears on the right. But it's complicated to get everything lined up and I don't want to spend a lot of time fiddle farting with a drill.

Instead I'm gonna try something I've always liked about Japanese woodworkers' tool boxes which you see on the left and animated at the bottom.