Friday, Sep 19 2014 [38 miles]

Today I’m removing the side pannels and saddle to get familiar with the bike. While the pannels are off I’ll add a pigtail for heated gear and see if the Tiny-tach that’s been sitting in my tool box for years works with this bike.

How about that. The bike came with a spare fuse. How nice of Suzuki. I wired the heated gear pigtail directly to the battery, making a few snips in the proctive cover over the hot lead to route the wire. This was probably a good thing as the battery terminal connections were very loose, unlike every other fastener I touched today.

The Tiny-tach works well. I find that surprising as it is very old and I expect the battery to fail. But until it does I’ll use it. I cut a strip of scrap aluminum and marked it up for hole locations. A little time with saw and file got it ready to mount.

The head of my rivet tool is too close to fit the Tiny-tach mounting flange. Plus, I fubared the holes in the mounting plate for the tach— I think the drill walked a bit and I didn’t notice. The holes were close enough for cable ties, so that’s how I mounted the tach to the mounting bracket. Excess wire was bundled up and wrapped in friction tape then cable tied to the horn bracket. Looks ok; no loose wires to snag.

It works.

My clutch doesn’t have any free play so I checked the adjustments. I can’t loosen the cable any more than it is. I might have to move the lever on the engine case over one spline to get some slack.