[ppronti]

Alan

My interest in doing the research on this project was actually rooted in the issues I have had with this bike since I have bought it – knowing that the previous owner had confessed (over a not-quite-running-properly bike) that he had opened the bottom of the carburetor. With my technical background I figured, “eh… you’ll figure it out.” So I bought the bike for what, now I realize in hind-site, was more money than I should have offered… it has had a snowball of issues – head gasket blew (just completed that work), chain/sprockets/front brakes are shot (getting parts for those now), and here soon I will be getting on the carb again (as I work on the drive).

So, with a bike that isn’t tuned properly, I bought the service manual and as I also perused the many contributors work on this forum over the past year about the carb, I came across the tach mod and said to myself $50 was an inexpensive way to be able to know what the engine RPM is to be able to tune the bike – and even set the idle speed.

And as I further read the issues with the installation of the unit (horn tone fluctuations, I decided to understand the schematics) – I actually took some photocopies of the schematic from the service manual and a 30 color marker set, and colored-coded the tracings of the wires accordingly – otherwise the schematic was daunting to me (I learned a lot from doing this – if I run into a schematic like this again, I may not need to revert to my Kindergarten-skills!). So really, the motivation in doing the research was selfish.

As I am a technical person, I like having a tach on an engine… it helps troubleshooting in general. I felt the 10ish hours reading the schematic an investment and would eliminate downstream issues in pulling current from the wrong place (didn’t want horn, or any other, fluctuations.

And, since I did the work, and you all have helped me before you knew me (thank you all), I wanted to “give back.”