OK, silly question time...

[darthandy]

Would it be possible to wire up some LED's to indicate when the coils are firing? The idea would be to know when a coil was failing or had failed. I have noticed on the forum that a number of members have stated that it can be hard to tell when a coil fails since the motor doesn't necessarily run much worse. You only really notice by way of decreased gas mileage or inability to go over 120 to 130 km per hr. I thought that wiring up some LED's to the coils and putting a small panel somewhere on the fairing would make that info easier to spot.

 

Thanks,

 

Andy

[tz89]

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[darthandy]

Thanks, but I was thinking along the lines of a constant dash display that you could see as you ride.

 

Andy

[spear]

Just imagine. You could have four different coloured LEDs.

You private disco light show.

I remember a mate of mine in the early 70s had eight LEDs set up in his dash for his V8 GT Ford Falcon Super Roo so he could monitor his spark.

Very cool.

[Flyinfool]

It would be easy to wire up some LEDs to the primary side of the coil. But that will only tell you the the TCI is sending a signal to the coil, It would not indicate whether or not the coil fired the plug.

 

Now just off the top of my head without really thinking this thru;;;;;;;

You could make up a sensor for the spark by putting several wraps of wire around the plug wire and running that thru some sort of regulator, maybe a zener or avalance diode. It would take some experimenting and possibly a few blown diodes to get the number of wire wraps around the plug lead just right.

[mbrood]

A super bright LED typically drops 3.4V leaving 8.6 to be dropped by a 420 Ohm, 1/8th watt resistor putting 20 milliamps through the LED. I'm not sure about the wiring on the 2nd Gen... the 1st Gen TCI is high and pulled to ground when wired, so you could tie one leg of the LED-resistor to +12V and the other to one leg of the high side of the primary cil to show the igition circuits were working.

 

Getting a real indication of the high voltage side (secondary) of the ignition is trickier and somewhat a hazard from sparks, but a 40,000V spark would feed through a 2 MegOhm resistor to an LED to ground. This still wouldn't tell you if the plug was firing and there's only two ways to insure, with a oscilloscope or an internal probe... both cumbersome to mount on the bike and the extension cord can be a real hassle.

[darthandy]

... both cumbersome to mount on the bike and the extension cord can be a real hassle.

 

Yeah, just imagine going around a corner in town and the cord goes up onto the sidewalk where the boy scout is waiting to help an old lady cross the street. Definitely wouldn't be making any new friends there!

 

Andy

[darthandy]

Say ... here's a thought. I could rig up four small spray bottles aimed at the pipes. Then I could hook up 4 GoPro cameras also aimed at the pipes and hooked up to 4 small monitors at the dash level. Then I could rig up a contraption to squeeze the four handles on the bottles and watch the screens to see if the water sizzles off at the same rate. Of course I'd need a seeing eye dog mounted on the tank to bark when I approach something (Car, truck, fence on the other side of a "T" intersection) to avoid hitting it. Hmmmm.

 

Andy

[mbrood]

I thought that was why Yamaha issued Gremlins...???