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Electrics |
Ruth's comments |
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The standard mini
electrics will be retained in the main. This will give all the standard
lighting controls. From the Mini loom the Yamaha electrics will be grafted in.
This sounds complicated, but other than picking the right bits from the
ignition circuit, the 2 looms don’t have a lot to do with each other. The tricky decision
to make is which way to go with the instruments, the options are: 1)
Stick
with the original mini dials. The tacho could be modified by halving the
pulses from the ECU and reprinting the dial graphic to read up to 16,000
rather than 8,000. The speedo head would need to be swapped for an electronic
unit. This would be a cheap option, probably sub £100. 2) Replace dial set with Yamaha
R1 dial. This keeps with the “keep it simple” philosophy and is a very neat
solution, dials seem to be available for the £75 mark on EBay. The only small
problem is to fool the speedo into reading the correct speed, but easily
solved. 3) Replace dial set with Yamaha
R6 dial. This is pretty much as the R1 solution, but cheaper. The down side
is that the R6 revs 4000rpm higher , so the red line is in the wrong place.
This is easily solved by reprinting the dial face. The R6 dials go for sub
£50 on EBay making it very attractive. 4) A new dial set from ETB,
Greenguages etc. This is a pricey option. I did this with the Tiger build, it
costs around £230 for tacho, speedo, temp and fuel. It looks classy though. 5) A Stack combined Tacho/Speedo.
This is a very neat solution, but not cheap. £450 for a basic setup and more
if the fancy options such as acceleration timing are wanted. 6) The Digidash from ETB. This
is the Dog Dangly bits! It does everything you could ever want. All the
basics plus acceleration and data logging, all downloadable to a PC. Its
about £550 which is pretty good value for what it does, but do I need it??…..
hmmm, nice toy though :-) 7) Stackdash. This is Stack
instruments version of the digidash. Bl**dy expensive at around £1500
depending on options. Too rich form my wallet! I decided on the R1
or R6 options, basically whichever I pickup for the right price off EBay
first!…. and the winner was the R6 dials. £41, so I was pleased and what a
neat little unit it is too.
R6 dials (early
version) I later found that
not all R1 / R6 dials are the same, same plug on the back but not the same
function on each pin. Basically the carb R1 & R6 dials will work the same
and the injection R1 & R6 will work the same. But to get a R6 dial to
work on an R1 loom would take a lot of extra electronic “bodgery” so I cut my
losses, sold the R6 dial above and bought a 2003 spec dial that was plug and
play.
R6 dials (2003
version) Fitting The loom has some 60
connectors on it, plus an imobiliser. I spent a lot of time picking my way
through the loom marking what each connector was. My plan was to use the
Yamaha loom as the master and graft on the extras for the “mini” side of
things. As the mini loom was a bit of a mess at the front anyway, I ditched
it and replaced with new. I fitted the loom over the engine and sort of
pulled it around until it fit as best it was going to in its new
surroundings. I riveted a panel onto the engine frame to mount the relays on.
I extrended the cabling to mount the rectifier onto the sill where it should
stay cool. The battery lives behind the passager seat, which meant the
battery cables needed extending along with the cable to the starter. Next up was removing
the imobilser. It had a stack of plain black wires coming out of it,
disapearing into the loom. It was teedious work, tracing the wires, but it
was just a case of figuring out where the loom had been spliced and re-wiring
where appropriate. I’m not going to give details of what and where exactly
for obvious reasons….you are on your own! It was now a
question of wiring up the essentail ancilaries to be able to spin the motor
over on the starter motor. Which just meant the starting circuit. I used the
Mini key switch as per the master key switch in the yamaha loom, extending
the wiring forward, and wired up a “start” push button for the dash. I
checked I’d got oil in the engine, checked the circuit, connected the
battery, re-checked everything, turned the key and pressed the switch…. A relay
“click”, but no spinnig engine :-( After a few checks it seemed the starter
motor wasn’t doing its stuff, had I bought a duff engine? I removed it,
stripped it and cleaned up the brushes. I took it to work and powered the
starter motor up on a bench top supply and it ran fine. Back on the engine
the following evening, pushed the button and it started fine :-) few! The reet of the
electics was simple but slow work. Extending cabling from the Yamaha loom
forwards to the Mini switch gear. Don’t under estimate how much cable this
needs. I eneded up with a rats nest of cabling, but once it had been
ty-wraped and spiral wrapped into place it started to look a bit more
proffessional. Along the way there are a few extras that need to be wired in
that a bike loom hasn’t got: ·
fog
light ·
Wipers ·
Sidelights ·
Windscreen
demister ·
Brake
fluid warning light But fairly easy to
add in. |
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