CB650 Cafe project in Oregon

[FinChasers]

I have been building this bike for years... riding and building, tweaking and riding and I have just now found this forum.... Man I have been trying to eek info from other forums and see if it could pertain to the CB650.

It's late and so I'll just post the bike pic from the night it rolled into my garage and the bike as it sits now.

Ahem... let me correct myself... as it sits now the top end is off and the the entire tach, speedo, and idiot light cluster is removed with the headlight hanging so forlorn. Working on getting my all-in-one tach/speedo/idiot light from Acewell hooked up.

Thanks for being here and making it for the last few years financially... nice one.

Peace and Grease,
Eliot

[Volker_P]

Welcome here, Eliot!
Looks like you spent already some work and money on this bike. Is this a larger front disk from the SC model or something else? The tank reminds me a bit to Yamaha.
The engine looks strange around the cooling fins. Did you change something there or is this just a *.jpg-effect?

[pae]

Hi Eliot, welcome to the site

Phil

[cb650]

Looks good!!!

[FinChasers]

Thanks for the welcome. The tank is from a Suzuki GS bike from late seventies or early 80's... maybe a 550. I did a little blog write up on the paint job that has a spiderweb effect of clear coat cracks now.
http://finchasers.blogspot.com/2008/03/motorcycle-tank-repaint-bondo-primer.html
A guy in Portland here says it has the perfect vintage look now with the clearcoat cracked up. Oh well.

It's the stock disc up front. I put some dunstall reverse megaphone pipes on, rejetted, removed airbox. At the end of this post are some better pics that don't have wacky shadows making it look like I chopped the cooling fins:
http://finchasers.blogspot.com/2008/04/ ... omage.html

So now... How do I marry the mechanical output of RPM off the camshaft and into the electronic acewell/electrosport tach? Am I just mentally challenged because no one anywhere has talked about this that I can find except on a ford t-bird but I couldn't get it to relate... I'm almost embarrassed to ask in the tech forum lest I get laughed off the discussion board....

[Volker_P]

I would assume one could have something like a pickup coil on an ignition cable. Possibly one could also use a CDI to coils cable for signal monitoring. Depends on input signal requirements of the tach.

[Gunny]

You should be able to use a pickup off one of the spark plug cables, or wired directly to the output of the CDI. If you have problems with the tach reading being unreliable at higher RPMs, install a 1 megohm resistor in series with the pickup wire. It is also possible to solve the problem by using shielded wire and grounding the shield on either end of the cable. What model Acewell do you have?

[FinChasers]

You should be able to use a pickup off one of the spark plug cables, or wired directly to the output of the CDI. If you have problems with the tach reading being unreliable at higher RPMs, install a 1 megohm resistor in series with the pickup wire. It is also possible to solve the problem by using shielded wire and grounding the shield on either end of the cable. What model Acewell do you have?

After reading a bunch of Hondaman posts on the transistorized Ignition of the CB650 (being also like my CBX1000) I am now afraid to just wire up the tach to my coil inputs hapahazardly since I am a noob when it comes to all things electrical. The tach has instructions to put a resistor fuse thing inline if I need it. But I am also wondering if I need to bridge the two coils electrically otherwise I might only be getting tach readings at half of what it is actually revving (if that makes sense). I'm also having a heck of a time locating a good spot on my rim for the magnetic sensor bolt to also pass by the speedo sensing unit... I don't think I want to drill into the rim... maybe the spoke hub could be tapped, but then I can't find a place to mount the line and sensor. Can anyone in the Portland area recommend someone?

I got the Acewell ACE-2802AB-MX and have done all sorts of nice solder mods in the headlight bucket finally with new radioshack connector housings and such. I give you the full model number because they actually sent a letter stating that the rig was specially built for me since I made the purchase right in the middle of some switch in distribution here in the states and that Baja Designs is the new distributor without that part number. The letter from Taiwan was nice and the Engrish was awesome- but I got my stuff.

Oh and I just installed my custom oil cooler adapter and stuff from Terry in Australia. Looks real good. I just hope I did it right and that my guesstimate on the extra oil needed will be cool.

Selling a 4-pack of Barnett clutch springs for the CB650 if anyone is interested as well as the CBX project before I move to Australia in January.

[Volker_P]

No idea of this tach but it is certainly no good idea to connect coils somehow electrically. BTW, due to the series ignition circuit, each spark plug (and of course coil) fires every turn. Which might already avoid your problem.

[FinChasers]

Thanks, Volker that was exactly the info I needed. I am going to connect the tach input wire to one coil and see if I blast my tach to a smoldering little new-tech bucket of rubbish.

I'll let everyone know...

[Volker_P]

... or we just will hear in the evening news!