bensalf's 4 year caferacer build

Just stop it, for goodness sake!

You're making the rest of us look bad........

 

This bike is gonna be insane! Magazine quality!

 

can't stop now ,, otherwise it never happened
stu

 

onto the electrics now , and this was my trade till a few years ago, when I retired from house bashing!.
first I unravelled the outer tape from the entire harness, and replaced with zip ties.

then I pulled out all the wires I wont be needing, like feed up to the front ignition switch, auxillary feed for parking lights .
and run in new wires for ,sump temp sensor, wires for card reader ignition, and for acewell digital dash.
taped back up with new loom tape.

next the handlebar switches, they were pretty gunged up inside



sprayed up the housings also painted the switch knobs yellow.
had some new stickers made up at a local sign shop, these applied and clear-coated over



stu

 

Did he say "card reader ignition"?

Yes. Yes he did.
Mind fully blown.

 

NOICE!


Ive thought about making new stickers for my switches but instead of the general stuff I would put something like this.

 

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stu

 

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Did he say "card reader ignition"?
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ok, ok, the card reader ignition, its nothing flashy or complicated, its a standard card reader, normally used to open security doors.
as I did away with the yoke mounted key ignition, to make way for the digital acewell dash. I mounted the card reader under the seat, to the underside of the electrics tray
When you think about the positioning of the electrical components on a motorcycle, for example the feed for ,say, the rear lights.
the feed goes from the battery, (in my case in the rear seat hump" ), up to the ignition switch, back to the fusebox, back up to the light switch, and back to the rear lights
this circuit is somewhat shortened by moving the ignition switch, near to the battery.
any way here's the card reader.

there's a little red light on the reader, and basicly , you push the card inside ,red light turns to green, this switches a relay, turning on the ignition.
the only difficulty was the reader needs a 9 volt supply, which I obtained using a small electronic voltage regulator, they're only pence, from a local ,radio shop.

here's the complete ignition circuit

this is a voltage regulator, they're only tiny, but they get hot, really hot, they need a heatsink to stop them overheating.

you can see it here on the top left of the seat tray , mounted on the heatsink.

stu

 

next I decided to fit a battery isolator, as this will be only an "occasional" bike, so I could turn everything off when not in use.
you can see the isolator knob in the above picture, to the right side under the battery
here's a stand I made to sit the battery on top, and the isolator underneath.

stu

 

found a nice ,new 7" chrome headlight on ebay quite cheap.


stu

 

I also decided to fit a couple of small front running lights ,either side of the headlight.
looked at various types of lights, but found most automotive led lights were too large and expensive.
but found that the small led torches can be found in all sorts of sizes and very cheap.
I settled on these tiny torches, but they run off small 6volt button cell batteries, so I would need to convert them to 12volt.


I needed to reduce the voltage from 12volt to 6volt to run the lights, there are a couple of ways to do this.
one is to use the small "transistor" type voltage regulator, that I used for the card reader.
but these were too large to fit inside the torches, and the heat would be to great to dissipate from inside.
I could have mounted the regulator and heatsink inside the headlight.
but I decided to use 2 small 1 watt resistors, inside the torches ,to reduce the voltage.
I got rid of the torch batteries and push button switches, from the torches , soldered some wires directly onto the led circuit board, to test try them

here they are lit, from a 12volt battery charger

made some small brackets and mounted the torches onto the indicator stalks

here they are running from the bikes 12volt system with resistors soldered inside

stu

 

YES!

 

pretty sure when you turn off the battery your Acewell is going to loose it's wheel circumference setting. better write it down somewhere

 

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pretty sure when you turn off the battery your Acewell is going to loose it's wheel circumference setting. better write it down somewhere
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nope,! I enquired from acewell before I bought it, the only thing that is lost is the time clock, used it several times and all other settings are retained.
stu

 

here's the acewell mounted on a bracket I made, on top of the triple tree.
I made some tiny led idiot lights for the L and R indicators (orange) headlight (blue) neutral (green) and oil level (red).
and mounted them in the acewell surround

here it is powered up with most of the sensors set up

this is an amazing little machine , it cost around £130 all in, with the various sensors.
it does, ----- mph,,----- rpm, bar graphic and analogue,------ fuel level,----- engine temp,------ clock,------over rpm warning, light------
--over temp warning light, ----gear indicator, (haven't set that up yet), -------volt meter, ------2 x trip meters------riding time ------ highest speed.-----
neutral indicator------average speed, and possibly some more indicators
stu

 

next up were the rear lights, I decided to incorporate these in to the back of the seat

I bought some led rear ,stop/tail bulbs, and set about finding some 19mm inside dia, plastic tubing to house them in
I found that the legs off kitchen cabinets were the correct size.

I cut 3 lengths and cut 3 holes in the back of the seat, to resin the tubes in.


here's the finished article

stu

 

If you find that the LED warning lights are too bright for nighttime use they can be dimmed by coloring over the lenses with a black permenant marker. It's just enough to dim them for nighttime use and still let them be easily visible during the day.

Your patience with the details shows.

 

OK....wow...just wow...that is one fantastic build, nice work.

 

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If you find that the LED warning lights are too bright for nighttime use they can be dimmed by coloring over the lenses with a black permenant marker. It's just enough to dim them for nighttime use and still let them be easily visible during the day.
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yes, apart from the turn signal indicator lights, the only other one that will be lit at night whilst riding would be the blue, headlight indicator, oil and neutral would be off.
I could increase the size of the in line resistor for any that are too bright.
but the felt pen idea may be worth a try
stu