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68C

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Posts posted by 68C

  1. In the UK we have the choice of a basic cheaper mandatory 'Third Party' insurance which covers you for damage you cause to other people and their vehicle. Then we have the more popular 'Comprehensive ' insurance which also covers you and your vehicle. The comprehensive cover usually means your insurance company will fight their insurance company on your behalf. Is it the same with you?

  2. The usual confused old tradition. Goes back into the middle ages when servants, having waited on the their masters, were allowed time to visit their family after Christmas. Later it became the day you thanked your tradesmen by giving them a gift, this moved onto giving boxes of unused food to the poor. Now it is just another secular bank holiday. In the last fifteen years or so it becomes the first day of the sales when most shopworkers are expected to work, almost a complete circle back to the pre middle ages. Is life really getting better for the common man?

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  3. While thinking about our permanent magnet alternaters and the various ways they are controlled, either dumping the output as heat or opening the output lines, I remembered other motorcycle designs.

     

    The one I liked was fitted to the Yamaha XS750, XS850, XS1100 bikes.

    They had a fixed inner excitation coil and a fixed outer conventional stator coil. There was a metal claw arrangement that spun between them. The inner coil current could be adjusted by the voltage regulator to create a magnetic flux, the rotating claw created a changing magnetic flux which induced current in the outer coil. This assembly was narrow and fitted on the end of the crankshaft as with the V11, the voltage regulator monitored the output and adjusted the inner coil current to suit. This seemed a lovely solution for a motorcycle, it could be sealed,as the rotating claw stirred up the air aiding cooling. It did not need to 'dump' energy so less load needed to drive it. No extra bearings and no brushes to wear out. I understand the development of rare earth magnets and cheaper electronics led manufacturers to abandon this system - the old story of a cheaper inferior solution.

     

    Even better is the "Switched Reluctance Generator". Mechanically even simpler than our rotating magnet alternators, there is only a metal rotor and fixed stator windings and clever electronics. They can be built fairly narrow to suit a crankshaft mounting and these devices can even be used as both generator and motor, even solves the loose magnet problem in our starters!

     

    Google Scientific Research Publishing https://file.scirp.org› pdf › EPE2012060... for a better explanation than I can give.

     

    So who will be the first to measure up a Yamaha XS1100 alternator?

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  4. Do not see how changing to timing gears can help smooth running, unless of course the timing was way off before.

     

    These occasional coughs seem to affect fuel injection more than carb bikes. I feel it is likely to be due to running at the edge of a fuel map cell. A light change in rpm, throttle etc may make it jump one way or the other, rich or lean, and so be momentarily wrong at that instance. Our ECU's don't have many cells so the 'jump' is more noticeable than on modern bikes.

     

    A carburetter is an analogue device so the fuel metering has an infinite solution to supply fuel at the correct mixture. Fuel injection is digital of course and so moves in a series of steps, the cheaper the system the larger the steps.

     

    Just my opinion of course.

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  5. I well remember those Wankel engine Nortons at the TT. Watched them race prepare the bike in the pits which seemed to just consist of washing the flies off! The reason the bike disappeared from history was no one could decide what capacity the bike was and so which formula it could race in. Tragic loss of technology although doubtful it could meet modern emmission regulations.

     

    They did give me one good tip, do not use silicon brake fluid. It is too slippery letting the square section seals slide through too easily so they do not distort and so cannot pull the pads clear when the brake is released. They said many folk tried in the past to design disc brake calipers using round seals, it was the use of square seals that made them practicable.

     

    Years before that I watched Peter Williams on the John Player Semi-Monocoque 750cc twin at the TT, sadly that bike seriously injured him a few years later when the poorly secured tank-seat section came loose in a race. He went on to become our local Norton dealer, a lovely chap who would always give you time.

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  6. Took one for a test ride when they were new, did not like it.

     

    I was riding a T3 at the time and found the Centauro uncomfortable and harsh. The suspension was stiff and instead of that lovely torquey 850T3 motor it felt as if the piston were being knocked down by a sledgehammer rather than being pushed down. Of course it also looked like it had eaten a whole box of ugly pills.

  7. Sounds like more familiar countryside to me, Hampshire and Dorset, or Darzet as folk may say. But there is a strange fascination in those square plots.

     

    Sorry to have gone off topic, MY T3 850 (now 950) is in bits but will soon come together after the Great Winter Rebuild.

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  8. Oh yeahattachicon.gif834B8C4C-CF16-4DA8-BA2D-733ABF42C4F2.jpeg

    We have a long winter up here. Winter projects help.

    Being an Englishman, a rapidly endangered species, I wondered what Wisconsin is like. Opened up Google Earth and found Wisconsin, at first I thought Google had superimposed a lat. Long. Grid on the map then realised it was roads. Truly amazing how the surveyors managed to mark that out. How do you move diagonally? Do you go along the top and then down or zig-zag across.

    I could also see traces of snow in the ditches so now perhaps understand your winters.

     

    Very different from our random roads:

     

    Before the Romans came to Rye or out to Severn strode,

    The rolling English Drunkard made the rolling English road.

     

    (With apologies to G.K. Chesterton.)

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