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Ian Soady¹ said :-
Looks exciting! The methods I've seen use washing soda (sodium carbonate) rather than baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) but I'm not enough of a chemist to know the difference. I do think your scones might taste a bit funny of you put the former in them though!
29/11/2025 15:03:39 UTC
Glyn said :-
My mistake then Ian. It’s not bicarbonate. It says Soda crystals for washing on the bag.
29/11/2025 20:30:40 UTC
ROD¹ said :-
I am embarrassed to say that I made a similar mistake of greater magnitude, when I tried to clean expansion chambers with bicarbonate of soda instead of caustic soda.
In my defence it was many years ago!
29/11/2025 22:08:29 UTC
Glyn said :-
After 24 hrs, here’s the anode Rod. It seems to be working well.
30/11/2025 09:36:27 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
Looks disgusting but obviously working. Caustic soda is brilliant stuff for removing carbon, burnt on oil etc but it also dissolves aluminium and its alloys in very short order.
30/11/2025 09:58:33 UTC
Glyn said :-
First pass and a lot better after 24 hrs. I’m having a second and final round. The biggest problem was that someone had tried to put a sealer/liner in it and it had all flaked off. It took dozens of gallons of water plus nuts and bolts and a whole lot of shaking to get most of it out.
30/11/2025 13:23:43 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
Looking brilliant. Speaking of liners, the Francis Barnett I ill-advisedly built a couple of years ago had a tank full of bits of what looked like fibreglass resin in big lumps. Some were so big they wouldn't fit through the filler and it took me hours with a hacksaw blade cutting them small enough to come out. I suspect that the 2 stroke mix had stopped the liner from adhering properly.
01/12/2025 12:32:20 UTC
Glyn said :-
The Triumph has only had one previous owner so I asked him about the sealer / liner I found all broken up in the tank. He said he didn’t put it there and so it must be standard factory item. Now I have the dilemma of putting in a replacement or not. I’ve used Kreem sealer in the past with good results but don’t know if it will last. Triumph must have had a good reason to spend money on sealing their fuel tanks, perhaps they were poorly welded but I can’t see any evidence of that.
03/12/2025 15:07:10 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
A question for Glyn (or anyone else who may have an idea). You may remember we had a discussion about clocks etc for my B'Zuki. I bought a cluster which purported to be from an RF600. Now I'm trying to wire it all up and mostly succeeding but can't for the life of me work out how the temperature gauge is connected. It has 3 wires apart from the face illumination: brown, black/yellow and white / yellow. The only wiring diagrams I can find for the model, which are all pretty illegible, seem to show orange and 2 other indecipherable colours. Any ideas?
I've tried connecting a battery via various resistors to emulate the sender but get varying results, often with the needle continuing to rise - I suspect there must be some interaction between the three but can't work it out and don't want to fry it. To be honest it's not a priority but would be nice to have the gilt on the gingerbread.
07/12/2025 17:07:02 UTC
Glyn said :-
The only reason I can think of for 3 wires would be;
a positive 12v
a negative 12v
a wire to the sensor.
Possibly, the needle rises until the sensor wire is connected to neg 12v by the resistance of the sensor itself. It might be worth a resistance measurement through the sensor to help determine if this is the case.
I’m back in the UK on Tuesday and , if you’re no further, I’ll take a look through my many wiring diagrams of Japanese bikes. I’ve never found any wires with similar colours in bikes even from the same manufacturer in the past though. I would hazard a first guess as Brown 12v+.. black/yellow 12v- and white/ yellow as the sensor. A 12v filament bulb in series would possibly prevent any internal damage..
07/12/2025 18:29:02 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
Many thanks Glyn, that makes some sense. I've taken the bezel and glass off as the needle seemed stuck at the top of its range so may just have a look at the guts to see what's going on. I have measured internal resistances (written down in the shed so exact values not available) but they were in the tens of ohms IIRC.
I've ordered a sensor from alibaba but have no idea what the resistance range is - but at 3 quid I'm sure I can do something to make it work.
Now to work out a way of stopping the speedo cable colliding with everything else....
08/12/2025 09:57:11 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
A quick sketched diagram of the guts. There is a coil arrangement inside and the external wires connect as shown below. I suspect that w/yy and brown are positive and negative and that black/yellow goes to the sensor (which has a resistive path to earth varying with temperature). So that is effectively a modified Wheatstone bridge setup. Or that's my theory anyway.
Speedo cable interface solved with a drill and cutting disc in the dremel.
08/12/2025 14:04:32 UTC
Glyn said :-
Where is the coil connected into the wiring diagram Ian? Is it possible to see?
08/12/2025 18:45:29 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
I think it's between the junction between W/Y and brown and the B/Y. What has struck me is that the resistance there may be a potentiometer so I need to check whether it varies with needle deflection. It's so long since I've looked at Wheatstone bridges and the like that I'm a bit uncertain about what I'm looking for.....
I assume that somehow resistances are balanced to give no voltage at the coil when the needle is at an appropriate position for the sender resistance. I'm expecting the (generic) sender to arrive shortly so will measure its resistance at different temperatures (well ambient and boiling at least).
If all else fails I'll just fill the hole with a clock!
09/12/2025 10:09:55 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
That resistance is constant regardless of needle position so another dead end.....
09/12/2025 16:11:13 UTC
nab301 said :-
Ian , if all else fails fit a capillary action water temp gauge...
Nigel
09/12/2025 16:46:44 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
TBH I don't really need it but would like to get it working. My current (hoho) theory is that white/yellow is earthed and brown is live positive. Then black / yellow is attached to the sender which will give a variable resistance to earth. But no idea really.
Capillary action - I'd be worried about the tube breaking and showering me with boiling coolant.....
10/12/2025 11:19:41 UTC
nab301 said :-
I think the coolant temp versions are filled with inert gas ? any I've used have a sealed tube assy.
Nigel
10/12/2025 16:12:10 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
Put this aside for a while and instead fitted the tyre to the Steib wheel. I managed with one tyre lever after warming the tyre in front of a fan heater for a while and using plenty of tyre soap.
11/12/2025 14:04:17 UTC
Ian Soady¹ said :-
.... and have now eventually managed to connect the rev counter correctly so it works. I thought I'd carefully marked and idetified the wires but obviously not. Now embarking on making some split clamps for sidecar strut connection to the bike frame. Piles of swarf everywhere.....
13/12/2025 15:22:04 UTC
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