Thursday 11 December 2008

Complex simplification

Now in my possession is the Innovate LM-1 wideband monitor and data logger. The box is a lot bigger than i was expecting and was obviously designed with cars in mind, i was walking round and round the bike looking for a suitable location to install it.
There's not a lot of spaces left really, under the seat would have been the obvious place but after the death of my last nitrous controller which was located there, I'm a bit wary, it does get a lot of vibration there right behind the engine. There's plenty of cable with the unit so thought about attaching it to the wheely bars, but eventually i found that it fits snugly behind the nitrous controller in the headlight shell. I made up a bracket to hold it and it seems to sit nicely there. The only problem really is that you cant see the display or the buttons easily. It is however not too hard to reach behind the fork leg and press the record button, plus there's also reasonable access to the serial port so i can attach the cable that connects it to my laptop, and the laptop can show a lot more info than the units inbuilt screen anyway.
The LM-1 can record 5 further channels of information too, however a further adapter/input cable is needed, which at the moment i don't have.
So as well as air/fuel ratio i could record battery voltage, temperature, throttle position, clutch slip etc etc.
At the moment I'm just wiring it into the loom which is rapidly getting more complicated yet again. I also need to add some wiring ready for when i fit the 3 speed auto box.
You may wonder why an auto box requires wiring? The reason is that the ignition does not need to be cut to change from 1st to 2nd and 2nd to 3rd, but does need to be cut to go into 4th and then 5th. From what i can gather this is normally done using something called a shift minder, it can count the number of shifts made and work out when to kill and when no to. It also takes over control of the shift time and adds adjustability to it. However ....... they cost around £100 and i decided to try to figure out another way ... after all the GSX does have a gear indicator built into the side of the engine and it's easy to get a signal off 3rd gear and use it in some way to trigger a relay. I found something called a latching relay, this is a relay that keeps it's state even when power is removed. Give it another burst of power and it will switch back again. So the plan is to have 3rd gear switch the latching relay. Ill mount a momentary switch and LED to the dash so i can set the relay in to correct position after the burnout. It's more to do and more to remember but i can ask Stuart to check I've done my job properly before staging ..... it might be a good idea!

I've 2 weeks off work over the Christmas period, and so I'll have plenty of time to get things wired up and hopefully finish the new starter cart. I'll also be attempting to do away with the fuel pump and regulator by using 2 fuel taps mounted directly under the fuel tank. This should save some weight and make things simpler.
Lastly ..... I've finished modifying the Starter itself to a right hand operation, so i don't have to move my leg outta the way to get the bike started.

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