Finishing the Dash + more upright news

I've spent many, many hours in the last few evenings wiring up the dash. It does seem to have taken an enormous amount of time, just to make a few electrical connections. Anyway here it is, all the major circuits are now connected, all that's left to do are the sensor circuits for the Digidash and the extinguisher. The circuits terminate at multi way connectors, which while they add weight and potential points of failure, do allow the dash to be removed\replaced fairly easily. I think I'll plonk it in the car in it's current state, if for no other reason than I'm sick of the sight of it on the dining room table. On the plus side it does work nicely :-), and once it's in the car I can start interfacing it to the Bike loom that I stripped down and modified waaaaay back in January.


Again, I chatted with Tim Pell today about my replacement uprights, they aren't to expensive at £160 for the pair which is good news. But unfortunately they are slightly different in design to the ones I currently have, as they are designed for the MKII Genesis Evo. They will simply bolt on to the existing suspension and steering with no problem at all, but the calliper mounting points are different. The new uprights use radial mounted callipers, whereas on the older ones the callipers were lug mounted and needed adjustment brackets. Further discussion with Tim discovers that the radial mounts on the uprights are at 130mm centres, whereas the HI-SPEC Ultralight 4s mount at 129.5 centres, so it seems the callipers may simply bolt onto the uprights. Nah life cannot be that simple....... we'll see when the uprights and callipers arrive. If the offset is wrong I may have to choose a different disk and bell.... but things may finally be falling into place on the brakes & suspension front.

So it seems the fact that I've been waiting for 6 weeks for my callipers has actually worked to my advantage, I've rung HI-Spe2 c and asked them not to supply any disks or brackets for my front brakes just the callipers themselves, I'll fit the callipers and then measure up to see what offset is required after the uprights and callipers are assembled.

Also today Pace rang to tell me that the dry sump tank is ready for shipping and that the dry sump pump will be ready next week. Things are really looking up!

Today has been 2 steps forward and only 1 step back.

22:36 pm as I said earlier intended to fit the dash this evening, well for once my intentions actually came to fruition. I sat the dash on the bench and tested it's operation using as spare bike battery. Everything was fine except when I operated the hazards with the ignition off. Every time the hazard flasher clicked the whole dash was powering up, including the Digidash and even the indicator light on the ignition switch. I've seen this behaviour before and it was a fairly simple task to see that part of the hazards circuit was incorrectly connected to the fuse ways on the ignition switched side. This was therefore powering up all the ignition switched circuits (including the Digidash) via the flasher unit . Removal of the offending wire cured the problem.


20 Minutes later and the dash was fitted into installation from my normal driving position, with all the circuits turned on. I can comfortably reach the reverse enable toggle, switch which is the first red light to the left of the bank of green ones.

It think you'll agree it looks very nice indeed. I can see all the warning lights very clearly and nothing major is obscured by my hands or the steering wheel, I'm very pleased with it although if it was in carbon fibre it would be just a smidgen nicer :-)

(The pictures are a bit dark, as they were taken on my drive at 10 O'clock at night, I'll post a daylight shot tomorrow)

Even though the dash needs the wiring finally P clipping into place and the actual car circuits connecting this was a very nice moment, particularly after a week of setbacks.

Finally I've built and assembled something onto the car. So far all I seem to have been doing is dismantling it :-( and this was most definitely, indisputably positive progress! Hopefully if callipers and dry sump kit arrive in the next few days positive progress will continue.