900SS Ignition Project

Funny you should say that. There are books on witchcraft in my library...........


........right next to the ones on fuel injection.

The evening in the garage was a bit mixed. I found that it was me that screwed up the float level. I've put it at 14mm PROPERLY now. I now have a pair of reading glasses down there so I can see what I'm doing close up! As it turns out the float height was probably about right all along. That means I can got straight onto messing about with the ignition after I've changed the clutch slave cylinder seal.

The Xenon kit was a problem. First - to cut a long story short - the ballast was knackered. I borrowed one from the car to fault find and test how it all works. This showed up that my home modified relay operated lights will have to come out. When I go from main to dip the lights go out for a short blink. The up side that this will simplify the wiring a bit.

My plan for mounting the Ignitech is to make a steel plate along the lines of the original Ducati ones. The coils will both be on the left side and the Ignitech box on the right. If it works well I'll make a template and post it here, should make life a bit easier for the next man.
 
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This one is the bracket scribed with holes drilled at all the inside corners. Later I drilled the at the outside corners too and cut between them using a jig saw with a blade for metal. The bracket is made from aluminium about 1.2mm thick.

And the last pic is he finished bracket.
 
The hole on the cross I had to countersink so that it wouldn't rub against the black box. I also stuck rubber over the area under were the black box sits using double sided tape. Tha tab on the right that is bent up I bent back down again so I could lay the black box on it's side for a better fit. If you look at the tabs you can just see cut-outs for the large 'o' rings/ ty-wraps that will be used to hold the black box in place. I made 15mm long spacers from copper fuel pipe to mount the coils on as the Ignitech coils are smaller in diameter.

And here are the pics of the brackett in place and with all the gubbins fitted.
 
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The first start was a false on as it ran on one. One of the coil connections on the Ducati loom wasn't too good so a quick squeeze with some pliers and we were in buisness. I'm not sure if the bike starts from cold any better than before but the cold throttle response was definitely better. A quick run around to warm up the engine showed that the motor was a lot more pleasant at low speeds and throttle openings. Once things warmed up I never really noticed much until I looked at the rev counter. It will pull a lot better under 3000 and there is a lot less snatching. The motor requires less clutch slip and gear changes and is a lot less unpleasant in traffic.

I don't know how much more I'll be able to improve things by tweaking the map but I can't see it making a huge difference over the supplied map. What will make a difference I think will be a TPS so I'm going to try and source one. This guy has done most of the ground work : http://www.triumphrat.net/maintenan...r-remap-and-low-cost-stock-replacement-3.html . I like his way of mounting the TPS, neat and simple. I plan on trying to get an IE ignition map from Ignitech to use as a start point.

Once you start using the engine in anger the engine feels more willing to rev higher and my arse dyno says it accelerates a bit quicker too. I haven't had a chance to test it at motorway speeds for any distance yet. The motor feels a little different. Slightly more growl and maybe a touch more vibration. Nothing that irritates though. The coils appear to do there job, opening the plug gaps a bit more will show how good there are. They survived me having 'a senior moment' and forgetting to put the plug caps on the plugs before pressing the starter anyway.

Two coils and the ignition and cable for 212 euros is a pretty good deal if you ask me. I'll post as I go through the process of messing about with the maps. First I have to sort out a laptop with Windows on.
 
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Sitting on the sofa relaxing and reading through the Ignitech stuff. Managed to open the Ignitech program file and get some usefull ifo from it. First, the map already includes all the sites for a TPS but as the TPS is disabled only the first row is used. That will make life easier.

Next, my map is a bit different from other 'standard' maps I've seen posted various places. This is mine:

1500 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000
10 13 16 25 28 32 33 33 33 33

Will spend the rest of the evening studying!
 
Serious Black said:
Next, my map is a bit different from other 'standard' maps I've seen posted various places. This is mine:

1500 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000
10 13 16 25 28 32 33 33 33 33
Click to expand...

Am being a wee bit lazy as I could look this up.. but is standard advance maximum 36, so your map is retarding by 3 degrees above 6K?

Or do I have it back to front?
 
To be honest I haven't got my head round how the Ignitech works yet. I've read Brad Black's stuff plus a few others but most of these discriptions are a few years old and may no longer be accurate. Once I've got things straight I'll send a few questions by email to Ignitech. I'll try to keep the English plain and simple to reduce any chance of miss-understandings, something I have at least a bit of experience of doing. The bike doesn't feel short of advance anyway.
 
After another look at the map file I noticed that there is a 'retarded' setting of 6 which I'm assuming is the the fully retarded igniton setting. This would mean that the brain adds 4 degrees to that at idle to get a spark timing of 10 degrees BTDC at 1000rpm. I further assume that the brain adds to this retarded setting for the rest of the range. This would mean that if my engine setting is not at 6 degrees then the map will be out throughout the complete range. I think I'll be pulling the flywheel cover off next weekend to check it!

As things stand the bike is nicer to ride but does not start as well as with the standard igniton. That means I'll be finding out what my standard ignition was set at and adjusting the Ignitech accordingly. I'll also try and get my template scanned in .
 
Progress report: Well the TPS arrived a coupl of days ago and as soon as I got the chance I got started. Here's a pic of it. On Ebay it was advertised as for an 800SS and the box had various car makes writen on it. I dare say this info might be of use to someone.
 
And here you can see the adapter I made to fit the TPS to the carbs. I've fitted it to the laft carb as the right is moved when you adjust the carb synchronisation and this will in turn throw the TPS setting out. There is a tin cover over the boss that supports the butterfly shaft, this needs to be removed. I used a Dremel to cut a split in the shaft. My adapter is made from industrial nylon plastic. This is easy to work with. Took about 2 hours to lash up.
 
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The next step was to sort out the wiring to the TPS. I didn't have a matching plug so I cut y down throught the plug to expose the pins. I then soldered suitable wires on to them, wrapped the socket on bodge tape and filled it with epoxy. This should be strong and waterproof. Crap pic but you hopefully get the idea.
 
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My next move will be to remove the butterfly shaft and cut the end so I can solder in a flat peice of steel to engage in the TPS rotor. This will have to be fairly precise as I only have about 15 degree roataion on the adapter to use for setting the TPS up. The TPS is sprung loaded tto it's idle position so I'll set it so the reistance just starts to decrease as the butterfly opens. The TPS is made for an 8mm shaft and the Mikuni shaft is 8mm which is handy. Here's a pic of the rotor centre of the TPS.
 
Life with the Ignitech: The bike is a good deal more civilised in the morning and I can get out of the neighbourhood without sounding like a cold race bike coming out of the pits. It is still not as easy to start but I've waited til I know the base ignition timing before farting about with the software. The Timing was set EXACTLY as it should be. That is to say 6 degrees BTDC retarded and 32 degrees advanced. The software is set to 6 degree base advance to which it adds 4 degrees to give me 10 degrees at 1000rpm. This I will drop down to 6 - 7 degrees to start with.

When riding to work on a cold engine the bike is noticeably quicker and more tractable. Down to 2600rpm is usable. When I nail it she fairly picks up her skirts and flies now. I have indications that all is not quite as it should be with the carb adjustment. The main jets might be a tad rich. The plugs also indicate that I need to replace the valve seals when I pull the heads off in the winter.

My engine set up right now is:

K&N filter with chopped airfilter.
Dynojet stage one kit with #128 main jets.
Standard pipes and silencers (Silmoto 835 stamped on them)
Standard ignition timing with 'standard' ignitech map.
Un-dialed cams

If anybody out there has a similar spec set up and has had the bike dyno'ed I'd relly appreciate knowing what jets you are using.
 
Knocked out with a cold so not much done. Installed the software on my sons computer and checked the installed map. I also changed the base timing to 6 degrees and she starts as before, first press. I'm going to drop the timing at idle down to 8 degrees as it sounds a bit too far advanced at 10 degrees.

I also managed to install the software on my Ubuntu Linux system under Wine and it runs fine but will not talk to the USB -Serial cable. I'm going to spend a bit of time farting about with it but if anybody has been here before it would be nice if you could point me in the right direction as I'm stumbling around in the dark here.......


........Farted around most of the evening, still no luck with Linux. One thing I noticed was that the standard SS map is called Ducati_Kokusan_Bosch. Could this be a reference to Kokusan ignition and Bosch TPS? In which case I have a Marelli TPS and this may complicate things. I've had a closer look at the TPS side of the software, There are voltage settings for 0% and 100% so I would assume this is for setting up the TPS. Need to have a good fart about once I have the TPS set up so that I understand it before I run it live.
 
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Got the butterfly spindle modified. I marked where a steel plate I planned to fit would sit in the TPS. I then transposed the marks onto my adapter which was set in the middle position of the slack I've built into it. I took off the E-clip and the washer then used a Dremel to cut a slot in the spindle to take the steel plate which I then soldered in place. The whole plot has been assembled and checked to make sure the TPS is within adjustment. Here's a pic of the TPS with the metal plate in place and marked.
 
Heres a pic of the adapter with the transposed marks. You can also clearly see the mark across the spindle where I cut it. The cut went as far as I could down the spindle without cutting the carb body. The metal plate has to be the no bigger in width than the spindle diameter so you can get the washer and E-clip back on.
 
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Agree with Mr Black. A properly soldered joint will be far stonger, especially if the parts are a tight fit together.
 
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