Needed

Searched the world for a decent 80mm tach with digital speed indicator, surprising how few of these there are.

Next surprise is how much they cost!

Found two candidates. As/usual I seem to be drawn to the most expensive one.

Motogadget

I will use the starter button, as we are kick start only, as the toggle to scroll through the digital data. I will add an oil temp and oil pressure transducer. This is a very nice German gauge. 100% waterproof, vibration tolerant and has everything we need. Price is over $600... ouch. $700+ once we get the transducers.

Second choice. Pretty cool gauge little more than half the price of the Motogadget ($475).

Nice tach with colour changing needle and shift lights, pretty sure you'd never see any of that at WOT.

I was thinking I could hack the LED's and make the green one a neutral indicator, the yellow a signal indicator and swap out the red for a blue and have a high beam signal.

If I'm going to spend $500 on the SPA, might as well spend $700 on the Motogadget.

By the time we get this mounted it'll likely be 1k+ for a gauge... Wow, I am suprised by how much this bike is going to cost. We'll easily be at 15k cost soon, thats without the labour. It still needs a set of Ohlins for the back, thats another $1500 or so.

Go back six months to when I decided to do this... it was going to be a cheap, low cost build. Hah, sucker born every minute.

Carb Linkage Mod

So here is the carb set-up with the new throttle linkage position. Now the cable can route down the backbone and pop out in the center of the carbs :)

Just need to shorten the left over throttle shaft on the left side of the left carb. Need to make a shaft seal so it doesn't suck air through the needle bearing supporting the shaft.

I'll shorten up the intake silicone tubes a little, after we get the head back on. Figure we'll go as long as we can to keep that low end grunt where we want it.

Need to make some internal sleeves for the silicone, to match the spigots and throttle bores. it'd be nice not to have steps in the intake tract. As it is, the ID of the silicone obviously fits the OD of the spigots. we'll turn some Delrin (resistant to gasoline) sleeves and press them into the silicone. this will smooth it out a little.

As was from Topham Mikuni. Left side throttle linkage.

Center location

Yummy, accelerator pump. proper 4 stroke stuff.

Long time

Been busy!, Just getting back to the work on the 650.

Roger is finishing up the work on the head.

I have to deal with the new engine mounts. I put the engine cases in the frame, set on the cylinder and the head and bolted up the carbs. There is nowhere even close to being enough room to fit the carbs properly inside of the vertical frame tube. Even if I could squeeze them in there, I'd never be able to get them in and out without fighting or removing the head, can't have this.

I have read others have had issues with this as well.
Limey Bikes' Hornet has this issue. Here is a quote from his website. "The toughest thing was cramming those RS36 carbs in the frame… in fact it was so tight that the frame had to be shaved a little and there are no intake gaskets… it was that tight. I hope they were worth all the effort!"

Limey Bikes RS36 carbs and fit issues.

Option one, cut the vertical tube and relocate it.
Option two, lean the engine forward, rotating around the lower engine mount.

Option two it is. We will need to make a new rear engine mount, new top engine mount and new forward engine mount....
The rear mount requires cutting and welding, the other two will require making up new engine mounting plates as these bolt to the engine and bolt to the frame. I guess it's an opportunity to strengthen these areas anyways.

I'll post more pictures on the intended changes later today.