Vulcan500.com

burkbuilds wrote:Hey Triangles, I'm glad to hear your employment situation has changed to GOOD. Looking forward to your update in a few weeks. Congratulations.

yea actually I'd say VERY GOOD! The only downside is that I'll be out of the country a fair amount. Who know's maybe i'll pay Jablonsky a visit on the company dime

Hey that sounds like a really interesting job if you like to travel that is. Congratulations, hope you enjoy every minute.

Triangles wrote:... Who know's maybe i'll pay Jablonsky a visit on the company dime

Not a bad idea. Send me a pigeon note before you deliver yourself to the Wild East

I don't know where they're sending me first, but I have a feeling it's probably China. I could be there for a couple months. I've never left the north american continent so this could get interesting for me.

ok so works got me really busy, rest assured I am still working on this.

Hey Triangles, I'm just glad to hear that you are working steadily. Sometimes you just gotta pay the bills and play with the bikes later.

Have they sent you out of the country yet? Hope you are enjoying your new job.

Im moving on to gathering FI components. I had a minor setback with the trigger wheel as the starter clutch doesn't separate from the flywheel as I had thought. I'm still going to try to put a trigger wheel in between the starter clutch and flywheel, but it may take more trial and error than I had anticipated. I just wanted to let you guys know I haven't abandoned this, but now instead of a lack of funds, it is a lack of free time to work on this project. So this will be a slow back burner project that probably is still a year away from completion.

Glad to hear that you have work to keep you busy and that you haven't given up. Keep us posted as you have time.

Any progress on this project? I'm thinking about trying it on a 1980 CB400T whose carbs are completely thrashed...

Life has kept me busy and away from this project for far too long. Hopefully in the next week or two I'll be able to pull the stator cover and figure out where and how I'm gonna mount the crank position sensor. I don't remember if I mentioned, but I'm going to draw up a 36-2 trigger wheel in CAD and have it water jet cut out. I wouldn't want to go to the expense only to discover that the trigger wheel I designed isn't going to work! I've been busy polishing up and repainting some old cast wheels for my '06. Gotta get some safe tires on her before I go down due do old hard slippery tires. Still on the factory tires after 14k miles. Should have replaced them this past spring. I'm also rebuilding the forks on my '94.

Are you using the MS-II then? I've been looking into the MS-I, and it looks like I can just trigger it off the ignition...

Or are you doing ECU spark management in addition to FI?

Using the microsquirt controller. Plan to use it for both spark and fuel. apparently version 3 was recently released. It's almost functionally equivalent to the megasquirt II. With a cam sync signal and a crank position sensor. I can have the controller use single fire spark instead of dual fire ignition in theory giving the coils more time to charge and have a better spark. I doubt it will make any difference though. The two sensors also give me the ability to do sequential FI. I plan on fabbing up an aluminum intake manifold with a single 38mm throttle body. Right now I am trying to figure out the crank position sensor. Gonna try to use one of the factory VR sensors on a 36-2 trigger wheel sandwiched between the flywheel and starter clutch.

The microsquirt II has been out for a long time. I was putting off buying the controller until ver. 3 which is now available.

If you just want to do FI you can trigger off the negative coil wire, much like how you would hook up a tach.

Triangles wrote:I can have the controller use single fire spark instead of dual fire ignition in theory giving the coils more time to charge and have a better spark. I doubt it will make any difference though.

Hm! I wonder... If the spark was /too/ hot I expect it would lead to premature electrode wear. :3

Do you have a weak spark on that bike? My 500 seems to spark plenty strong, but some of the 30-year-old bikes I've had were pretty anemic...

no my EN500A runs like a top. The only place I would think this would make a difference would be at very high RPM as the time between sparks gets smaller and smaller. I usually don't ride at high rpm so it doesn't really matter. I was really looking to do sequential FI. It just so happens the requirements for that also allow single fire ignition. The most interesting part is that the ignition control will be much more advanced. Instead of just a simple linear advance of ignition with RPM, the ignition advance will also be determined by air/coolant temp and engine load (MAP sensor, throttle position). At cruising speeds (low engine load) I should be able to lean out the mixture and crank up the advance resulting in a measurable mpg boost.

I am really fighting the urge to ditch this project for building a Mazda RX-8. I'm sure once the dollars involved sink in the urge will soon pass...