Rewiring the pickups

This is not about mouse-gnawed wiring harness for your old Chevy pickup, although the effects are the same. Inside a lot of Ducatis the wires from the ignition pickups get hot and brittle. Actually it's more likely the insulation around the wiring goes bad. Which is what will happen when they sit in hot oil all of their lives. So some 30 or so years later there are problems.

You can see here there was an attempt to shield the stock wires with the orange covers. But even that effort can only go so far.

One of the preferred solutions is to replace the wire. Nowadays even mere mortals have easy access to what was once space-age parts, thank you Internet... Military grade wire is now available at the click of a button and not at an unreasonable cost.

Depending on where you are in the world you may even find a local supplier. The recommendation is a gas and oil resistant AND heat resistant PTFE insulated wire.  The milspec to look for is MIL-W-16878 although you may find similar wire without that spec. On top of that you may want to consider a PFTE heat shrink too.

When I get around to it I'll document the actual process but for now here's one person's instructions:

Method;--  Snip ONE lead, about 1" to 1-1/2" from the coil. Test at the plug to see which lead is still connected with continuity meter, bearing in mind the coil resistance is about 220 ohms. (mine measured 216 ohms.) So, you now know which lead is which. Snip the second lead to the same length. Carefully scrape any remaining insulation, and scrape the surface to reveal the copper wire. clean as required with solvent (carb cleaner?), and continue to gently scrape until you can see enough copper to be certain of a good surface for soldering. Twist your new wire onto the tail, and quickly solder the joint without allowing too much heat into the coil. (HOT iron and speed!)
Repeat for second wire, and then for the second pickup.
Thread a thin HS cover onto each wire, and shrink. Thread the next size larger HS onto the one pair of wires and shrink. Repeat for second pickup. At each stage, seal the end of the HS with a decent silicone sealant. I use a Loctite one, I forget the number right now, 5920 perhaps, a low odour (no acetic acid smell), oil resistant and high temperature resistant with a copper colour.
You now have two twin leads, work out how they will lie, so that they will not foul anything, then slip on the next size up HS sleeve, fasten in place with the metal clips, thread out of the cases, seal the exit point with more loctite, cut to length and refit your connector. In fact I used bullet and socket connectors and replaced the original connector.
Fire up and ride away!
Les.

In addition some people are also "potting" the new wires to the pickups. I'm not sure what potting material they are using.

 From http://www.mdinaitalia.co.uk

From http://beltandbevel.com.au/

The photos may not be Alazzurra specific as many Ducatis with ignition pickups may need some help.

More later.

Cleaning the Carbs

I can't get the bike to idle right. No matter what adjustments I would make it wouldn't make any difference. After some consulting I decided to clean the carbs. I have a small ultrasonic cleaner I got my wife for Christmas a while ago. Of course she's never used it. But it's too small and unheated so I sprung for the bigger one. It was on sale for $75 and I had a 20% off coupon so it cost me $60. I also got a gallon of Simple Green HD. Apparently the original Simple Green can dissolve some alloys if you leave them in too long. HD is not suppose to have that problem. I had to go to Home Depot for the Simple Green. I mixed it about 50/50 with some distilled water.

I took plenty of reference photos to know where the parts came off of and so I knew what they looked like before the cleaning. Of course there's a second carb I can also look at but I'm trying to only work on one carb at a time.

My dad bought rebuild kits for his 860GT which conveniently are the exact same carbs as the Ally. I ordered gasket kits so I can replace any parts I steal from the rebuild kits. Of course at some point I need to rebuild the 860 carbs too.

More pictures of the cleaned parts soon.

Fuse Box Part Three

I picked up a 4 fuse panel from Amazon. I'm not sure if its the same one as previously mentioned. Only one of the mounting holes lined up but I was about to get the screw tight enough it shouldn't go anywhere. Just having decent fuses should be a big win.

New Rear Tire... the hard way

The old rear tire was a little worn, especially in the middle. As there was a Bridgestone on the front the decision was to replace the rear with Bridgestone BT-45. The bike has a O-Ring chain (530) with a riveted masterlink. By loosening the axle and sliding the wheel forward I couldn't get the chain off. If I had thought about it a little more (note: this is where hindsight would come in handy beforehand) I should have slipped the axle out and then the chain should have came off. But no. I ground the rivet pin down and pushed it out. At least the wheel was off and the tire could be replaced. The tire on there was a 130 so that's what I replaced it with. I believe the stock size is 120, but I don't think the wider tire will be any problem. (The caliper on the stool is for the 860GT which is getting dual front discs)

Picure of cush drive. Much nicer than the ones on a Norton.

Sprocket still looks ok.

Here's the new tire. Nice, eh? If you look carefully you can see the missing pin from the chain. Not so nice. Apparently it's not easy to find replacement master links for riveted chains.  There is no standard. And this one was several years old, but still very serviceable so I didn't want to drop another $130 for a new chain. I learned this from a local bike wizard, Dr. Brown. He lectured me for an hour about not using the wrong master link. This is not the first time he's lectured to me and I hope not the last. He went through his collection of master links and couldn't find any that worked. Discouraged I left and later went to Cycle Gear. I had no hope that they had one but that day I was out riding and it was an excuse to stop. Plus the kids there like looking at the Norton. They just happened to have the right master link, but in the removable style with a clip. There are theories as to why the chain manufacturers went to a riveted style, one being the high horsepower bikes might pop the master link clips off. Needless to say this 650 isn't in that class and so off I went with my little prize. Link fit perfectly and now I'm off to the next disaster. The Norton and other Ducati have been getting all my attention. Maybe I'll find some time for the Ally next. It's like having three kids...

Bars and taps

The handlebars on the bike were extremely narrow. I guess that would be fine but I didn't like how cramped they felt. And when you were at full lock to the left your hand couldn't be on the brake or it'd get smashed. Not good.

We picked up a pair of Monster bars. One for the Cagiva and one for the 860GT. The 860 had the same problem, someone put bars on it that were narrowed. I had read somewhere that early Monster bars work great and so far they have. For one thing the chrome bars were very inexpensive. They came from Monster Parts and are only $39. Apparently the Monster controls are located with pegs or screws or something as these bars have small holes in a couple places.

As you can see at full lock to the right there is plenty of room for the lever and reservoir. Ok, plenty might be an exaggeration but there is enough.

As I said the other side is now usable at full lock. I will replace the master cylinder at some point to match the clutch side. This will work for now. I need to take another look at the cable and wiring routing but it seems that it will be fine. And then I'll add the bar end mirrors. But that can wait until after I get it running properly.

 I think I mentioned I was halted in my adventures by a leaking petcock. We sourced a pair of petcocks from Eurotrash Jambalaya. They are single taps so no crossover unless I put some T's in the lines. Since they have reserves on each side it should be fine. For some reason dual outlet taps are not very common?

I got the pair for a Bevel. For some reason the front carb tap faces forward and the rear to the rear. I'll have to rotate the inlet banjo and loop the line to the front.

I'll now at least get the bike started again and keep trying to figure out why it races. I've also got vacuum gauges so I can get the carbs synced properly. And the weather is suppose to finally come down from the triple digits and that will make working in the garage a little more pleasant.

Fuse Panel Update

As pointed out by Izaak on the Alazzurra Yahoo Group there is a much simpler solution.

Universal 4-way ATC fuse block with 4 separate circuits.

This is a "plug and play" with no re-wiring required. Since I won't be building a new wiring harness for the Alazzurra (yet) I'll go with one of these too.

Replacement Fuse Panel

The stock fuse panel uses some archaic ceramic fuses. They are notorious for not making a great connection and the ease at which you can remove them bears this out. On the panel the far left fuse is the main power.

The main power starts at the alternator, goes to the voltage regulator, to starter solenoid, then to the battery. From the battery it comes to this fuse then to the general relay. From the general relay it changes to the brown wire you see at the top of the fuse panel. This is your switched power.

This is a simple fuse panel with a ground block. I may switch this out for a 4 fuse panel without the ground block as the Alazzurra grounds to the frame. For a custom harness I'd bring as many grounds as I could to the ground block.

I made a pigtail with a round connector at one end to fit onto the power block and a spade connector on the other. It will fit in the stock brown wire connector. Having the extra connection isn't idea but it retains the stock wiring connector and I don't cut into the harness.

Then I'll move the three wires to the new fuse block. The first one is the turn signals and brake lights. The next one is horn and the last one goes to the handlebar switch.

I'll also add a separate 25 amp inline fuse to the main power. The other fuses will be 8-10 amps.