What did you do to your Yamaha today?

Regardless of the MPG's that's a really sweet machine, when I'm riding the MPG numbers are the last thing I give a $#it about... more often the tank endurance is greater than my behind in the saddle.

 

Normally, yes, don't care much about MPG other than I'd like to know and periodically track it just to see if something is wrong.
I'm planning to go on a day trip with friends and want to bring this bike so I need to know how far a tank can go.
I normally take one my other bikes on day or multi day trips.
I'm also going to run the petcock into something to measure how much gas I'll have left in reserve too. That's good to know.
I have after market petcock now.

 

So what have I done with my Yamaha today... used it to spank a Sportster on a stoplight shootout that was totally unexpected. I was trying to put some distance on the traffic behind me when the light turned green, the Sportster next to me gunned it and we were off to the races. It was close but he never passed me and eventually ran out of breath around 117 MPH but it wasn't for a lack of effort, that hog gave me a good run. First time I've seen a chopper do a wheelie like that.

 

Need some input on a motorcycle "dashcam" if anyone is using one. I have a guy in town that has no respect for bikes and he made a right side pass on me on a split 2-lane after jumping traffic at an intersection. Took the complaint to the sheriff who said it would be a difficult one to address without an eyewitness or other evidence so now I'm at the point where I need to have some sort of a backup for the next time the guy gets stupid... thought about calling a few guys I used to work with who have patches on their jackets but I think it would be better to catch him in the act and stay within the law. That being said there are hundreds of those cameras and honestly as a professional video guy they all look cheap to me, maybe someone here has a good experience to share? If nothing else I might just mount two obsolete smartphones and use them strictly for their recording capabilities, what do you think?

Thanks in advance
Brett

 

I prefer helmet cams so that camera sees what I'm looking at so if a car comes from my side, it will capture what I'm looking at.
Honestly, this is my pseudo life insurance policy so that If I am taken by a car, my family's lawyer can sue their ass with this evidence.

I have several I use for various situations.
Ghost XL
This camera I have mounted adhesive on the side of each of my helmets. This has LONG battery life so I can record a long ride w/o as frequent charges. I typically will charge up once a week (I average 3-4 1hr rides a week)
Sound and video quality is "ok" but if someone hits me, I'll get it on video cause I almost always have this one on.
Cam does not have great stabilization
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BV9YQFQF/

I have a chin mount for go pro style cam and recently switched from a go pro 8 that I lost to this one which has good stabilization but not as good color as the go pro 8.
And $99 is much cheaper than go pro 8.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D1JLXFRH/

Insta 360x2.
I will take this on longer group rides and is by far the best thing for capturing EVERYTYHING around the bike. I have this set up to be powered by the bike in 3 of my bikes (but not my XJ)
I had to get a vibe isolator and a 12" extension for it to work w/o premature shutting off.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B099PFX52R/

 

Today I tried to ride with a group of friends to Port Dover for Friday the 13th for the first time. Instead it decided to start leaking oil from my 3rd cylinder. Lost power. Not sure what my next move is…

 

Leaking oil is never a good thing but I'm confident you'll get things straightened out and back on the road again.

 

Thanks, we shall see

 

You sure it is not the cam cover gasket above the third cylinder or it could be from further along the joint and dripping at the third cylinder.

 

Does anyone know what the link is to the schematic for the 750 SECA TCI module? Recently started having problems with one side not firing the coil and all the diagnostics point to the TCI module.

Thanks

 

As far as I know there is no schematic or datasheet for the ASIC used in the TCI

 

Thought someone had posted the schematic of the board itself but didn't have anything specific on that ceramic ASIC. Problem I'm having is a loss of signal to the base of the transistor for the 2/3 coil. Input is present and coil is good.

 

Maybe this thread

https://www.xjbikes.com/forums/threads/ic-ignitor-wip.118221/page-3

And one oddity of the TCI is if only one pickup coil is working the opposite ignition coil will fire. So if you are missing 2/3 firing, then be sure the 1/4 pickup is working too.

Is that 2/3 output stuck high?

The driver transistors for the output transistors are surface mounted on the mezzanine PCB. I found some notes where if you look at that PCB and count it like an IC (CCW from top) then pins 8 and 9 are for one channel, and pins 13 and 19 are for the other. Pin 9 and 13 are the collector outputs of the drivers, and pins 8 and 19 are the base of the drivers that is driven by the ASIC.

I found it way too hard to try and troubleshoot on the bike so I built a test set and used a couple of arbitrary generators to simulate the pickups.

 

With the level of skils in electronics you guys have I'm suprised you haven't designed a microcontrolled ecu replacement working on vacuum as well as rpm - would unleash a chunk of midrange torque? Arduino has been done I think.
I built one a few years ago that did fuel and sparks - sparks were the hardest since you have to equate time with degrees of rotation at the particular rpm to get the timing right.

 

I ended up doing a bench test feeding the TCI a square wave from my function generator and scoping things out... I have a stereo microscope for doing surface mount and did a close exam of the ceramic monolith and found a hairline stress crack running across the pads where the pins are soldered and running thru the one printed resistor, needless to say it's done. For the time I'm going to go after a used TCI from the evil-bay but as minimuttly pointed out there has been some progress made with the arduino but I'm not a code writer or low-level programmer so I'd have to rely on whatever half-ass code that's out there already. I'm a retired Motorola radio tech with over 40 years of experience so fixing the TCI would be easy if the unobtanium ceramic ASIC wasn't broken. They're made by Hitachi, the same company that brought us cheap-ass VCR's during this same time and honestly I'm quite surprised it lasted this long. The crack looks to be the result of years of vibration and the poor wave soldering of the day that gave out on some of the pins allowing the wafer to crack.


The timing issue can be addressed using degrees of trailing spark similar to what GM did in the 80's with the Computer Command Control. Take the input pulse as the zero point and subtract enough ms to equal 350 degrees trailing, to the distributor coming up on the next cylinder that would equate to +10 degrees over whatever the baseline of the distributor was clamped down at (8BTDC for Olds 307) making the total timing +18 BTDC using the previous spark input to start the timer. It was known as the "spark echo" and the pulses were one cylinder behind in the mind of the computer which ran a Motorola 8-bit masked processor. Somewhere in this mess I have an actual schematic of that archaic pile of junk made by Delco-Hughes

 

Update. Found another XJ750 TCI module for $100 and replaced the capacitors in it, had to go thru and rework all of the solder connections & traces as water got in an corroded them from the terminals. Everything got conformal coated and I put another 40 miles on this morning. Runs about the same and that cold autumn air really makes a difference on the midrange power.

 

How difficult are they to repair for an electrical novice like me? Has anyone done a how to video on these repairs?

 

You had to remove conformal coating to get to the solder joints and remove the Caps? If so, how did you work thru it? blade or a solvent or heat?

 

Repairing these isn't difficult for a veteran technician, unfortunately I can't say how that would be for a novice as everyone has their strong points regardless of experience. What I will say is the biggest challenge of the TCI board is not damaging or destroying the traces on the board. These were OEM by Hitachi and in the early 80's were not known for their robust construction & manufacturing practices, add another 40+ years of temperature swings to the mix and things become fragile. That being said a little care and experience with a quality soldering iron and desoldering equipment will get the board out of the box. It is secured at the bottom where the connector spades run thru and they're positioned in a way to index the board and maintain alignment with the two countersunk screws used to hold the heatsink on the back.
Once the board is out it can be cleared of the factory conformal coating using acetone on the back of the board only. Reason for this is the acetone will take the plastic sleeves off the capacitors and make life difficult, there are two each of 0.47uf, three each 10uf in a row and one 2.2uf at position C9 nearest the ceramic LSI which is the "mystery brain" of the whole module. This guy does the timing processing and drives the switching transistors to fire the coils and it is very fragile as I have found out. Cracks or breakage can not be fixed despite my 40+ years of experience. I don't know what the functions are of the capacitors or how critical the values are, if you're going to replace them I'd strongly recommend going with a real Nichicon or Panasonic (Matsushita) made part with a 105C temp rating. I used Nichicon UXY series caps which are rated for 135C and 40G vibration, these are specifically designed for the automotive market and are available from DigiKey and Mouser Electronics. You will need to order them as 50V rating as this is what was found in the TCI module.

There's no YouTube How-To video to fix these that I know of, honestly I try to avoid the YouTube flix simply because the guy doing the whatever may not be doing it correctly himself and as a former service writer & photographer I'm very concerned with the viral spread of misinformation. It is of utmost importance these modules are done correctly using high quality parts... unless you like walking away from your bike on the side of the road.

If you have the desoldering skills, equipment and experience the repairs are not that difficult, the board uses plate-thru pads that are easily yanked out so you want to be absolutely sure all of the solder has been removed before pulling the part. The solder used on these is not a very good quality being an early generation wave process and the plate-thru holes are contaminated, they will outgas and bubble when you solder them.

So lets say you do accidentally pull up a trace. It's not the end of the world and is easily fixed with some thin solid hook-up wire. I scraped the green mask off the traces leading from the bottom connections to the leads of the transistors themselves and soldered down runs of solid copper liberated from CAT-5 cables. A full twist around the lugs gives everything a strong mechanical bond but don't solder both ends right away instead solder the one at the lug after a full wrap then using a small jewlers screwdriver bend and manipulate the copper wire to follow the trace to the destination and wrap it around that connection then solder, this way expansion won't pop everything loose. This is one of those things that comes naturally to me having done it for so long but it's not easily explained in a way that's easily understood by all.

Once everything was buttoned up I sprayed the board with Krylon clear acrylic using thin layers. There is a gob of adhesive used by the factory to sort of secure the capacitors together but sometimes it drips down, the problem here is this adhesive is known to break down over time and become conductive enough to cause problems. I recommend removing it from the board and any connections it may be bridging, doesn't matter how "clean" it looks it's a long known problem with Japanese electronics of this era.

So I did a few runs this evening and while it's hitting on all four jugs it doesn't feel as strong, I run the Dragger app on the phone which is secured to a cradle on the headstock and it reports a measly 21.26 seconds for 0-100 MPH hitting a top speed of 102.83 @ 26.53 seconds. What really sucked was the 1/4 mile times of 14.42 @ 92.53 MPH... This bike has run 12's as recently as July when it was 15F warmer. Launch times were good but 0-60 is 6.20 seconds, a full third slower than before the TCI failure so I need to figure out what's going on here. It says SECA but it feels more like a Vespa.

 

Thanks for your in depth reply. To be honest l would do more harm than good l think. I thought it would be a challenge for a novice.

 

Good info from @Brhatweed there...
Pulled the forks on my Vmax 1200 to change the seals, bit of a dissapointment in that they were too thick to allow the circlip in, so for now they are without it. Whilst on the job I pumped out the brake callipers one at a time, cleaned up the pistons lubed with red grease and pushed them back in. Pads cleaned and inspected, refitted. Need to put some test miles on it.

 

I had a TCI to update, and had looked for Automotive capacitors so I checked this out. According to the Mouser and Digikey queries Nichicon UXY is not an option for the applicable values on the TCI, and per the datasheet from Nichicon for UXY the values are only available from 2300 to 11,000uF. Did I miss something?

They do have other AEC-Q200 qualified capacitors, but they are rated at 105 degrees C, which should be fine.

https://www.mouser.com/new/nichicon...1a68OhmHigKwtx-Is_j16oQgrAaCd8IU2SFog-vj3ifZ3

 

Now you've done it - my interest has been piqued, and have ordered an Arduino uno project kit. The goal is to write/download and modify code to run the Yamaha coils from the existing pickups, add a vacuum sensor and run it on one of my xj s. Maybe it could also read and log a wideband lambda. All together this could be sold as a module one day, perhaps help keep our old bikes on the road, and with a vacuum sensor make a fair few mpg for them.
When I get some way in I will start a thread on this.

 

Please make it compatible with both sides of the road, not sure I can shift with my right foot

 

Just change the camber shims and you'll be fine.

 

I replaced the fork seals on two of my 3 900 Secas. I used ATF in one and, for fun, used 10W40 in the other. I cleaned up the front calipers and bled both bikes.

Changed oil on the 750 Seca.

I purchased a 550 Maxim that's been sitting inside in this guy's basement for the past 15 years. 27,xxx miles. Came with a key but no title (bill of sale) so I'll have to go the surety bond route here in MN again for an extra $100. Should make a good ride for one of my sons!

 

The 550 is a sweet looking bike for sure, not so many around here in uk. Not so sure about a maxim 550, in fact I never knew there was one?

 

Another SECA here in Minnesota is always a good thing

 

The current stable includes 5 Secas....

 

Trying to talk my better half into a SECA but she's leaning towards a Maxim being the seat is lower and in her words... wider. At least it's in the same family.

 

I re-soldered two of the three wires on the turn signal switch. Now the blinkers work again.

Then I washed it (well, as much as I wash any bike), re-installed the stock seat cover and took a bunch of pictures so I can list it for sale. It's been a fun project to get the bike back on the road, my wife is pleased that I had something to keep me busy over the winter, I feel good about rescuing a bike that was headed for the junkyard (or just rusting away in a friend's garage), but I don't really have room for a third bike in my garage or in my life. I suspect I'll be lucky to get half of what I put into it (that's the problem with a project bike, isn't it?), but as long as it finds somebody who'll ride it I think I will be OK with that.



She is a nice looking bike.

 

Gal-Pal likes it but I don't see making a trip to Illinois, give me a ballpark number for it and maybe I can convince her.

 

Not counting what I had to give the State of Illinois to get the bike in my name, I have about $1700 in it right now. If I could get a grand for it, I would be quite happy. I'd like to get it out of the garage before I get my knee replaced next month and am out of commission for the winter. The bike includes a ton of spare stuff including both wheels, both fenders (the shinier ones are on the bike now), rear brake panel and shoes, head pipes, those big passenger-peg-mount castings, coils, fork tubes and other stuff I can't recall. In addition to the normal stuff (carb rebuild, tires, etc.) it's also got a new clutch, recent valve re-shimming, tapered roller bearings in the steering head, floating front rotor, EBC pads, caliper rebuilt with new pistons and seals, Galfer brake lines, new Progressive shocks and that nice Puig windscreen. I really did go kinda overboard with this project... but it was a lot of fun.

Here are a couple more pictures:




I love that it's still got the original aluminum "License Applied For" plate. They don't make 'em like that anymore!

 

$1700 is more than fair for a road worthy bike, if you could find a place to store it until spring you'd probably have no problem breaking even.

 

Stripped the downdraft Mikunis on my vmax trike. Hell of a job to find replacement bungs for the jet blocks, just jets came up with rebuild kits that has them, as well as the float lid rubber gasket seals. No throttle spindle seals in the kit, but they have told me they have found some. Now waiting for the postman.
Oh, also ordered some cds steel tube for the telescopic forks replacements - leading links.

 

That is damn good to know. I had been looking on facebook marketplace and there were a few '80-82 Maxims being offered under $1K, which made me think it wouldn't be worth much. Then again, it's October and many of these bikes had worrisome remarks like "needs a battery" (translation: "hasn't been started for a couple years, probably needs carb rebuild, tank cleaning, etc.") or "runs but needs choke" (translation: "expect to have to clean the carbs"), and so on.

Storing the bike till spring is not a problem. The motorcycle garage has room for three bikes, though the third one has to be parked sideways across the workshop area, meaning that taking that bike for a ride requires an awkward game of musical motorcycles. That won't be a problem this winter, as I'm getting a knee replacement next month and probably won't be doing any riding or wrenching till spring anyway. The bike's already 90% of the way to being set for winter storage; about all I have to do is squirt a little oil in the cylinders and crank it over.

Perhaps come spring I will ride it to the Slimey Crud Run with a "for sale" sign on the windshield.

 

Difference between fully running and ready to ride and needs some work is about $500 or more around me for an XJ. The "just needs battery" ploy people do often means it needs more than that. People list for $1700 and get $1500. That does not stop people from offering $1K before even showing up which I"d reject.
Yup spring time is going to be +$300 to $500 difference.

 

What did I do today... started with a drive to the DMV to renew my license-plate sticker. I could have done it online, but then I would have had an expired sticker on the plate (it expired Monday) and a piece of paper that is supposed to convince the cop I've renewed. Maybe not the best thing to do if going out of state. By going to the DMV I got the sticker right away. And avoided a "convenience fee" for doing it online.

Then I came home, installed the sticker and the plate, and also installed a GPS (retired iPhone 8) mounting on the handlebar:



This uses a RAM phone holder and part of the matching ball mount, bolted to a clamp that held the shifters on my mountain bike before I replaced them:



Waste not, want not. Installing this clamp unfortunately involved removing the bar-end mirror, grip, switch pod and clutch lever assembly, which in turn required disconnecting the clutch cable. Keep that part in mind.

At this point I do not have a power supply for the phone, but I do have a 10,000 mAh power brick in the tank bag, which I calculate will run the phone for a good two days or so. Good enough.

Then I took the bike on an 88-mile ride to shake things down. Wanted to verify how the bike was running, and moreover how my soon-to-be-replaced knee felt after a few miles. It felt... painful. Not enough to avoid riding, but enough to tell me stops every 30-50 miles are going to be required. Fine. I need to take more photos anyway.

The bike ran well, but... seemed shifting was harder than expected. Hmm... eventually I remembered I'd had to loosen the cable to R&R it from the lever. Maybe I didn't adjust it properly? While riding I tightened it up a bit with the lever-end adjuster and the bike then shifted much more as I remember it. When I got home I tightened it up down at the transmission end, so I could again have some adjustment range at the lever.

While on the subject of cables... the bike was still not returning to idle as quickly as I would like. Then I noticed there was absolutely NO slack in the throttle cable. I moved the adjuster a bit so I have some. I also looked at the plugs (the best I can do without a Colortune™ tool), and found that #4, which had fouled from being too rich a couple months ago, was now showing a tad lean. Hmm. This carb is an oddity. When I drilled out the EPA plugs, I found #1 and 2 were both around 1.5 turns out on the mixture screw, #3 was 2.25 turns, and #4 was only 0.75 turns out. Or I misread. Anyway, when I last fiddled with the carbs, I assumed I had made a mistake and set them all to 2.0 turns. Synched the carbs and it ran great... for about 800 miles, and then the #4 plug fouled to the point where my four became a triple. So I set the mixture back to 0.75 turns. Now the bike wouldn't return to idle, or wouldn't continue idling at 1100 rpm. I have since been slowly adjusting the mixture screw out, and the bike has responded by running and idling better. So far, I think it's still (at a hair over 1 turn out) still a bit lean, so I moved it another 1/8 turn today. I intend to ride, read the plug, tweak the screw... and, I suppose, eventually I will get to the point where a synch check shows some difference.

The point of this whole project is that tomorrow I leave on a three-day weekend ride, to visit breweries in the Driftless area and sample their Oktoberfests, and then to Pine Bluff, WI, for the Slimey Cruds Cafe Racer Tour on Sunday. Should be about 750-900 miles in all. I do this pretty much every year, weather permitting. Last year I took the Harley, was planning to take the Himalayan this year but my bum knee cannot stand banging against that tank-mounted crash bar. The weather forecast is perfect, and last night I got the bonkers idea of riding the Yamaha. It will certainly be easier to park at the end of the run in Leland. The only question is whether my sore knee can tolerate the rather tight bend it has to make on the Maxim. I think, based on today's ride, that it will, so that's my Plan Of Right Now. We'll see how it feels in the morning...

 

Minor milestone hit yesterday:



The odometer is now reading 10,201 after a pretty good day’s ride into Iowa. It ran well on a lot of two lane (wouldn’t you know it, fresh chip seal on the fun parts), a bit o’ gravel and too much four-lane between Dubuque and Manchester. Not that the bike complained (aside from a bit of tire squirm at 80 mph on grooved pavement), but I am feeling my age…

Idle is still a bit unsettled (it’s still prone to hang around 2000 rpm for a few seconds when I come to a stop, and if I’m stopped more than a minute it’ll slow down and stop if I don’t blip the throttle a couple times). I did a leak check before I left, didn’t find anything, so I suspect it needs another round of carb syncing. Alas, I just ran out of time to do that before I left.

Today it goes for a boat ride across the Mississippi and maybe some splish-splash on a bit of the Trans Wisconsin trail.

 

What did I do today? First I got it dirty.



Then I washed it:



Somehow it never ends up entirely clean.

 

Did no riding today instead double checked the integrity of my helmets in light of the recent rash of motorcycle fatalities because they didn't wear their helmets. No they might not save a life that is going well in excess of the prevailing speeds but odds are in ones favor during a true accident.
You won't catch me dead without my bucket on.

 

I got my recent purchase to turn over and spark using the starter button. It's a 1981 550 Maxim. I cleaned up the kill switch and switched out a "fuse" installed by a previous owner, guess which one it was?

 

Think of the time and effort involved in selecting just the right size bolt to fit into those clips so perfectly......instead of just buying "a fuse".

Has anyone else seen the movie Idiocracy?

 

I can’t decide if this is just plain stupid or “it’s not stupid if it works”. I’m thinking just plain stupid. Maybe OK for troubleshooting, but that’s it.

 

Some people are born stupid, some don't really know the difference and there are a select many who try really hard at it.

 

I see it every day!

To stay on the subject of Yamahas, I rode down to Pine Bluff for the Crud Run. Stuck a FOR SALE sign on the windshield. So far nobody’s waving C-notes in my face.



The last 500 miles make me wonder… do I really want to get rid of this bike? It overstuffs my garage, I am constantly fiddling with those fussy carburetors, and I’ve only ridden it 2500 miles this year (of which 1000 so far were to the spring and fall Crud Runs), but… it is a hoot to ride, especially on roads like this one:



So is it OK to keep a bike that’s fussy, high maintenance, only gets ridden a little but is tons of fun? Hmmm…

 

Brawndo, it's what plants want. Also, that movie is responsible for the rise of Croc shoes.

 

In a word.......Yes!

 

Actually, the XJ's are not really high maintenance, once they are "right" they tend to stay that way. At least when we are not fussing with them and trying to "improve" them. Yes, the valves need to be checked once in awhile but don't really change much if one is not trying to ride them like a superbike. Shaft drive means no chain messing about, cleaning, lubing, tensioning and cleaning flung off lube from other parts. Once the carburetors are set they stay well adjusted if not messed with. Take care to get things well adjusted and then just ride and ride and ride and.......

 

And there's the rub. I feel like I'm running into the “90/90 rule,” which says the first 90% of a project takes the first 90% of the work, and the remaining 10% of the project takes the other 90% of the work. The way it's running now, I'd feel pretty comfortable riding it to California and taking along not much more than a tire-plug kit and spare spark plugs. But... it's not yet right. In particular, it doesn't want to idle properly. When I pull in the clutch to shift, the engine is lazy about dropping back to idle. At a stop, it likes to idle fast for a while and then slowly drop... and drop... and eventually stop. This seems to change as the day goes by, and I seem to be constantly fiddling with the idle screw under the carbs... which is hard to reach, just about impossible with gloves on and painfully hot without gloves.

I thought I had this settled a while back, after I adjusted the valves and synchronized the carbs (#1 was far enough off that that cylinder completely shut down when the other three were at a proper idle speed), but maybe a thousand miles later it fouled out the #4 plug. Replacing the plug and leaning out #4 to what I thought I had found when I removed the EPA plug fixed the fouling problem, but caused the idling problem to return, but the carbs still seemed to be in sync. I've tried to find vacuum leaks, with no success thusfar. I think I have the #4 mixture screw set approximately right (according to the spark plug, which is showing neither too lean nor too rich), and so will probably take one more shot at synchronizing, but it's frustrating how the bike is so close to being really good and I kinda feel like I'm chasing my tail on this.