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As some of you know, this past weekend (including some Monday and a bunch Tuesday) I did a large number of mods, including installing an oil drain valve (same as on my Audi -- it's too cool for words), an oil temp sender & gauge (more on this in a minute), grinding out the weld seams on the exhaust headers (thanks Trinc for pointing it out!), installing an ignition advancer (thanks Keith for selling me one), etc., etc. Most of this stuff was dual-purpose -- write ups & pics for the book, plus to test some stuff.
So tonight I jump on the bike to ride off to a friend's and lo- and behold, the oil temp guage looks all pretty and it's reading off numbers all pretty... and within three miles the temp climbs past the max temp the gauge can display, so it just scrolls "HI" on the display.
Lessons learned over the past four days:
(A) When getting gauges, stick to ones designed for marine or open-cockpit use specifically. Do not use regular automotive gauges -- 95% of them aren't weather/water resistant. I think I'll be sticking in a Stewart Warner marine-grade oil temp gauge next & praying the same sender can still be used. [EDIT: Stewart Warner got back to me and said "Nope, we don't have what you need either... so sorry.")
(B) The oil in the Kats run significantly above 260 degrees F... Ambient temp was 78 degrees (F) here tonight when I rode out and I maxed out the digital gauge's range before the on-ramp to the interstate. Water cooled engines normally never see those kinds of oil temps -- even my turbo Audi doing a full-out run for Atlanta only ran to about 245 for the whole haul doing well over 150 mph. I had bought the set-up because it was supposed to go to 300 degrees -- I'm not sure if it was my misunderstanding or their misprint that made me think it was 300 degrees (C) as it's range instead of 300 degrees (F) -- and it stops saying the temp at 260 anyway (what BS).
(C) Don't buy Cyberdyne gauges. Among other things, they have a special "set" mode that is triggered by feeding the light sense circuit at the same time as the power circuit... Since motorcycles trigger both at the same time, the gauge always goes into setting mode (and I had to do some soldering to come up with a time-delay circuit solution for that one -- again, thanks Trinc for helping with the circuit logic!).
When I finally managed to get someone on the phone at the factory (His name was Mark, but he sounded more like a Marcy), he babbled that their gauges weren't designed for motorcycles, that they weren't rated for rain/weather (that makes some sense, although the gauge is sealed tight by design), the vibration of a motorcycle (like bikes vibrate in some way different than cars might), or the electromagnetic noise of a bike (what a crock of shite!). I had emailed them about using their gauges in a motorcycle beginning of last week and had gotten zero responses.
PS - if anyone knows where I can get a 300 degree (C) oil temp gauge in a weatherproof design, I'd be appreciative.
Cheers
=-= The CyberPoet
So tonight I jump on the bike to ride off to a friend's and lo- and behold, the oil temp guage looks all pretty and it's reading off numbers all pretty... and within three miles the temp climbs past the max temp the gauge can display, so it just scrolls "HI" on the display.
Lessons learned over the past four days:
(A) When getting gauges, stick to ones designed for marine or open-cockpit use specifically. Do not use regular automotive gauges -- 95% of them aren't weather/water resistant. I think I'll be sticking in a Stewart Warner marine-grade oil temp gauge next & praying the same sender can still be used. [EDIT: Stewart Warner got back to me and said "Nope, we don't have what you need either... so sorry.")
(B) The oil in the Kats run significantly above 260 degrees F... Ambient temp was 78 degrees (F) here tonight when I rode out and I maxed out the digital gauge's range before the on-ramp to the interstate. Water cooled engines normally never see those kinds of oil temps -- even my turbo Audi doing a full-out run for Atlanta only ran to about 245 for the whole haul doing well over 150 mph. I had bought the set-up because it was supposed to go to 300 degrees -- I'm not sure if it was my misunderstanding or their misprint that made me think it was 300 degrees (C) as it's range instead of 300 degrees (F) -- and it stops saying the temp at 260 anyway (what BS).
(C) Don't buy Cyberdyne gauges. Among other things, they have a special "set" mode that is triggered by feeding the light sense circuit at the same time as the power circuit... Since motorcycles trigger both at the same time, the gauge always goes into setting mode (and I had to do some soldering to come up with a time-delay circuit solution for that one -- again, thanks Trinc for helping with the circuit logic!).
When I finally managed to get someone on the phone at the factory (His name was Mark, but he sounded more like a Marcy), he babbled that their gauges weren't designed for motorcycles, that they weren't rated for rain/weather (that makes some sense, although the gauge is sealed tight by design), the vibration of a motorcycle (like bikes vibrate in some way different than cars might), or the electromagnetic noise of a bike (what a crock of shite!). I had emailed them about using their gauges in a motorcycle beginning of last week and had gotten zero responses.
PS - if anyone knows where I can get a 300 degree (C) oil temp gauge in a weatherproof design, I'd be appreciative.
Cheers
=-= The CyberPoet
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