900SS Ignition Project

My only concern was getting enough heat into the spindle for the solder to take in the slot, it is too easy to lay solder onto something without getting the capillary action and it may look like a solid joint and grip the plate,you may have tinned the components first. Where if using an epoxy you would guarantee the resin being all the way around the joint. The strength of epoxy is not that much less than ordinary 60/40 tin solder but is much less than silver solder. This is only an observation and not saying that you have not or are not capable of soldering.
 
I do have a decent sized iron and it did take a little time to warm the shaft to a suitable temperature. The shaft's very size make's capillary action less of problem as the heat is conducted away pretty quickly. I did tin both sides first. an alternative that is probably better but will take a bit longer to do is too fit two small roll pins as near to th outside of the shaft as possible. I liked the idea of a thin flat plate because it will have a certain springiness and not be too strong should something jam. Everything appears to work smoothly. Overtime this weekend so God knows when I'll get to play with the bike.
 
It works!

I managed to get a couple of hours in the garage last night and got the carbs installed. Tonight after a bit of overtime I went straight in and coupled the TPS wiring up to the black box. First I measured the TPS wiring with an ohm meter to find which wire was which. I connected two wires over the ohmeter and twisted the throttle slowly if nothing happens you have the two ends of the potentiometer. If the reading changes you have one end of the potentiometer and the wiper. Note down if the reading increased or decreased. Swap one of the wires. If the reading doesn't change then the wire you picked is the other end of the potentiometer and the one you put down is the wiper. If the reading changes then the one you kept is the wiper.

The wiper wire goes to pin 6 on the black box. If you connect a wire to the wiper and turn the throttle and the reading goes down, then this goes to pin 17. If it goes up then it goes to pin 7 or pin 16. Both of these were used on my unit (for the ignition pick-ups). I just spliced into one (the wires were both blue). Hopefully there will be no interference.

My Ignitech kit came with a little plastic bag with spare pins. I have the proper crimping tool to fit them and I wouldn't attempt to use any other way of fitting them unless you are desperate and handy with a soldering iron...........

Once this was done I booted up the laptop and loaded the default map and changed the base timing to 6 degrees. I then enabled the TPS and pressed program just to make sure. I twisted the throttle. You can see the reading change. My throttle closed reading was 141mV so I pressed the 'set TPS 0% button'. I then wound the throttle full open and pressed the 'set TPS 100%' button.

Once I'd tucked the wiring away a bit tidier I pressed the starter. She fired second go which is OK and ran fine enough although I think the carb balance will need a look at. Rev'd quite nicely considering the bike was cold.......and that's as far as I've got for the moment. My plan for the testing is to turn off the TPS and take it out for a warm up run, set up the carb balance. The another run to get a feel for the bike before turning the TPS back on and repeating the run. That should get me a good impression as to the difference the TPS makes, or otherwise!
 
Not much done this weekend, missus torpedoed a well deserved sunday afternoon in the garage! Not a happy bear. I got a try at balancing the carbs with my home-made gauges which was not 100% successful. I couldn't get them exactly balanced, they would be slightly out of synch on one side which would switch to the other side when I slowly opened the throttle. Methinks the valve guides need a look at.

I whipped off the airbox top and filter and used 2 long thin stainless welding rods under the butterflies to set the sych. I had to make some clips from the same wire to hold the slides up out of the way first. I made rings on the top of the rods . In these I used a piece of bent softer wire to pull on. I adjusted the butterflies so the softer wire began to bend straight at the same tension on both sides. This should be OK for testing the bike. Now I have to wait for the storms to blow over.

This evening I had another go at making the Ignitech program work under Ubuntu Linux. The program runs fine under Wine but will not talk to the USB-TO-RS232 adapter. Linux is detecting the adapter and the driver is installed. Everything looks good so I think the problem is getting Wine to talk to the adapter. This is currently beyond my ability to fix, and probably will remain so.

My problems with the valve guides are fixed already anyway. I've bought a set of heads and barrels for a 99 IE. The IE has a slightly longer duration cam which should be interesting. I'd only planned on using the heads but I've since found out that the pistons are supposed to be 50 grams lighter than the earlier ones. That's an awful lot of weight not to have to change direction twice every revolution at 9000+ rpm so it looks like they will be going on too.
 
Mission accomplished.

Plan A went out the window because my son was using his laptop so I couldn't turn off the TPS so I just fired her up and went for a spin along my usual test route. The difference isn't spectacularly great but the bike is DEFINITELY nicer around town. I can even putter along at 30km/h through the housing estate. I found I was in a higher gear than normal at some points and I could accelerate cleanly from 2000rpm. Lowest stable cruising revs are 2400rpm. I've still got a lot of farting about with the mapping to do so there will probably be some small improvements to come.

The big question now is - was it worth the effort? For me the answer is yes. I set out to make the bike more civilized in the town and it is. I also have a good base for further tuning. The job wasn't too difficult but one needs some hand skills for fabricating the adapter block and a steady hand for the soldering. I hope this little blogg will help anybody else thinking of enabling the TPS. I have to admit to being very impressed with the Ignitech ignition. Well worth the money and the best technical software I think I've ever used. Takes a fairly complicated system and makes it about as simple as it is likely to get. I will off course post any further useful info plus stuff from my winter rebuild.
 
Snow and ice here now so the Duc is grounded til spring. I modified the base map to set my advance to 6 degrees at all throttle positions at idle speed. This is basically the setting I was running without the TPS and it was quite nice. With the TPS I hope the bike will be a notch better, we'll see if we get one of those nice dry cold winter days with glorious sunshine that are ace for a spin. Providing you ware two layers of thermals and you're best cold weather kit. My biggest head ache come spring will be to find a good dyno tuner nearer than 300 miles!

One thing that occurred to me was the what would happen if I dialed in more advance at high rpms and shut throttle. The idea would be to reduce the engine braking - a poor man's slipper clutch.
 
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On Saturday there was a couple of hours with sunshine and showers after the storms so I hopped on the bike and went for a spin to see how the bike goes with the new map. Not much noticeable difference really. Better from a standing start and puttering up the driveway. I had a look at the plugs and they say the idle mixture is too rich now. As I don't need as much throttle for low speed cruising the idle mixture is now much more important because it is used more. My mixture screw is 3 !/2 turns out after some farting around with it last time I tested the bike. I suppose I better put it back to 2 1/2 turns. Now it's time to tidy the garage up and get organized for the rebuild so this will probably be the last entry on ignitions for a while.
 
Something that might be of interest is my final drive gearing. I have a 15 tooth gearbox sprocket and a 39 tooth wheel sprocket. Probably go to 15/40 when time comes tochange them.
 
I'm trying to revive this Project thread since you by now must have had a tasting of summer!

Serious Black said:
. . . Coil primary resistance is 3 Ohms, plug caps are 5k Ohms. Couldn't get a secondary resistance but will try later.
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Did you end up getting a sec. circuit resistance figure?

I am curious since I'm looking for a set of aftermarket coils, but wonder if the Ignitech IC-TCI-S ones (which I believe are the ones you got) will work OK with the standard ignition units of the Supersport. One difference is the Ignitech 3 Ohm primary resistance vs OEM 3.8-5.2 (Haynes manual values) or my measurement of 5.4 Ohms. Another thing is the figures for the output side of the coils. Do you know if the Ignitech coil/HT leads will require different spark plugs?
 
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