Rats' Nests

A parcel full of shiny things arrived on Friday from series sponsor and all-round nice chap Andy Bates of AB Performance.

The package on the left contains uprated clutch springs that, allied to new friction plates and steels, should mean that I am able to transfer motive force from the 16 valve Yamaha engine to the wheels via the gearbox, prop, differential etcetera.  On the right is a billet oil sandwich plate that will divert lubricant through the 25-row front-mounted oil cooler.  Judging by Austen's experience, the sandwich plate may need a touch more machining yet.

As suggested in the previous post, I think I've reduced the bike loom down to what I need.  The picture below shows roughly what's been involved.

The jumble of wires on the left is, broadly speaking, what I'm retaining to run the engine.  The jumble of wires on the right is what I've removed.  If you're eagle-eyed, you'll notice that the fuse box and relay assembly lie within the junk pile.  There are a number of reasons for this.  Firstly, I want to make fault-finding  in the paddock as simple as possible - as simple as possible for me.  While I can sit in front of a wiring diagram and suss-out that the clutch switch needs to be earthed and the tilt switch needs to be glued-up etc, the fact is that its all a bit of a bodge that I'm likely to get very befuddled by when I've got a short amount of time to solve the problem before the next race.  Hence, the relay assembly has to go.  I've actually done this before on a R1 without any major problems - albeit the R1 in question was a 2001MY 5JJ where the number of wires in the loom was about 1/3 of what is present on the 4C8.  Next, I wanted one fuse box that covered all circuits in a logical and easy to understand fashion.  The problem that I did have when I built the loom for my R1-engined MNR was that I struggled massively to put together a fuse box assembly that was neat and safe.  Help is at hand in 2013 however thanks to Car Builder Solutions and their wiring module, pictured below:

The unit above is pre-wired such that you generally just need to run the relevant wires from the other components.  The really appealing bit for me is that it sorts out the power distribution to each of the fuses which is where I struggled in the past.  The downside is that its relatively heavy but I'm more than prepared to compromise here for the sake of getting the wiring bullet-proof.  Of course there are a couple of small deviations that I'll be making., this is my car after all.  For example, I'm letting the ECU determine when the injection fuel pump should be powered-up as on the bike.  This therefore requires a relay.  There are two relays on the wiring module.  Nominally one is for the horn and one is for the fan.  Thankfully, since the bike horn is so small and efficient that it can be wired direct, I can use the 'horn' relay to switch the injection pump.  Ta-dah.  The other benefit of the wiring module is that the abundance of fused circuits means that I can split most things out onto their own circuits and hence make fault-finding easier again.  Others will probably have started from scratch (a bit beyond me) or have extended the bike loom (scrappy in my eyes) so I feel that I've made the best decision for me as the builder AND user.  It just needs to work now, which brings me to my final point on the wiring.  The original circuitry contains a zener/diode assembly to protect the ECU from voltage spikes.  I sort-of understand how this works and with the help of a couple of the chaps on Locostbuilders have hatched a plan to replace the assembly which was contained within the yucky relay box with a couple of electronic components.  I've also got to 'trick' the ECU into thinking that the tilt switch is still present using a resistor so as a result have a few small components to wire-in.

Tomorrow is chassis collection day which is exciting.  I just hope that I feel a bit better as I've felt dreadful all weekend - too weak to be able to remove the oil filter on the engine which is frankly pathetic.

Happy New Year by the way.

TC