695 mods and revamp
Dwardle:
My 695 engine has a ton of that paint discoloration as well. I see that you sandblasted yours, but I'm really not looking to do a complete tear down of the engine at this point.
Are there any other ways to remove the paint discoloration, like maybe a dremel to get it down to the metal again?
Lieutenant Dan:
Hey Suzy,
I've started down the engine rebuild path myself recently:
Day 1
One question I have for you is how much of a process was it to sand blast your heads to get down to the metal? This is something I would love to do to my 695 while I have the engine apart, but I have never sand blasted anything before... Wondering if its something I can do with reasonably professional looking results in my garage or if it's something I'm going to have to send the heads away for... Thanks, and good luck with the rest of your 695 project! I think a lot of us are following with great anticipation for your next progress update!
Dan
suzyj:
Here's how I'm doing my indicators.
Basically, adding ballast resistors so your indicators don't flash at double rate really offends me. I think it's much better to disable the circuitry that detects a blown bulb.
So on modern Monsters like mine, the indicators are driven from a little circuit in the gauges. It's a BTS711L1 quad high side driver, from Infineon. This little guy has four power mosfets inside, and uses them to switch the indicators. Each indicator has its own mosfet. Google-fu tells me that the BTS711L1 has a pair of "status" outputs, which pull to ground when there's a fault (like a blown bulb), telling the microprocessor in the gauges that something's amiss. When all is well, the status outputs are open collector, which means they are only connected into circuit when there's a problem.
To ensure there's no problem, let's remove them from the circuit.
First, we pull the gauges off the bike and pull the back cover off. This is what we see:
To get at the other side of the PCB where all the circuitry is, we need to pull the board off the front bezel. Start by popping the two little tabs on each side:
So now here's a view from the front, with bezel removed. The pointers have to come out to get the PCB loose. This is done by pulling the little round bits off, and then popping a screwdriver under the clear pointer at the base and levering it up. It's on the shaft pretty firm, so some courage is needed:
Once that's done for both tacho and speedo, flip it over, undo the two screws, and pop the four plastic tabs, and you'll have the PCB free. This is what it looks like:
The little dude that drives our indicators is in the middle, with the label "BTS711L1". The pins are pretty small. You'll need some very teensy cutters to cut them without mauling other pins. I borrowed a pair from my work, where I spend my days working on teeny-tiny electronics, in thumping big radiotelescopes:
We want to cut pins four and eight. Afterwards it should look like this:
Voila. Now reassemble, put it back on the bike, and enjoy.
Just for fun, I moved the current regulator board that came with my Rizoma indicators from the positive side to the negative, and used one board to drive both indicators at the back. This works because only one side flashes at any given time. I hid the little board in the wiring loom, so it's out of the way. I also used slightly better quality connectors for the indicators. Here's my tail wiring:
suzyj:
So the loom is basically complete - there's still a couple of bugs to iron out but they should be fairly straightforward - for example my power distribution board won't allow my headlight to turn on because of the high inrush current - I'm thinking that rather than just blithly increasing the current limit, I'll add circuitry in the headlight housing to soft-start it, prolonging the life of the headlight globe.
The last thing I did for the loom was a "test fit" of pretty-much everything - the battery, coils, rectifier/regulator, airbox, tank, seat etc. I even put the (empty) heads back on, so I could see how the various bits fit and how the wiring routes best.
Then I turned it on and tried stuff - indicators, horn, lights (see above), etc. The gauges sweep and the oil light comes on, as well as the check engine light. The bike has no oil in it yet, so this sort of thing is to be expected. I'll progressively tick stuff off as I get the rest of the parts. While it was together I took a bunch of photos, as I reckon it looks kinda cool like this.
Firstly from the rear, showing my tail chop with homebrew licence plate bracket and sexy Rizoma indicators:
The right side, showing just one!!! wire crossing the horizontal belt cover. I rerouted the starter lead on the other side, and brought the oil pressure line up the back.
The left side - more wiring here. The cable ties are temporary - once I get a stash of the little saddle thingies, they'll be hidden behind the frame.
Here's one under the tail, showing the absence of rectifier and coil:
Quite a bit of wire never made it back on the bike:
Here's me making the most of the bike looking like a bike again, and sitting on it making "vroom vroom" noises while wearing appropriate footwear:
Turns out I'm not the only one who does that. My faithful workshop cat also likes sitting on my bike:
Slide Panda:
No bare feet in the shop!
As always - impressive work. I wish I had your skills. My 900 could probably well do for some electrical modernization.
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