Everyday TR1 - dialing in carbs and improving everyday usability

With the first gentle rises of temperature (read that as in, it was frigging cold yesterday and today it's steaming hot), it was time to start waking up all the other bikes in the workshop. Most interesting to me, of course, find out what that new TR1 engine was like.

I am also especially happy to report, that smearing some rtv-sealant around the base of the oil-pressure sensor finally did the trick and it has stopped leaking. 

But I did notice that it wasn't quite idling very well and also after the first "spirited" break in ride I noticed a somewhat weird hesitation below 3000 RPM. O2-sensor o'clock! (Yes, it's running off a separate battery and because said battery is a bit knackered it's also running off a charger... quality engineering at its finest.)

13.8:1, or in other words, I have developed a perfect lean-burn engine. (All of a sudden, I am happy to have stopped at my workshop and tackled this issue immediately, because this could have ended very, very ugly.)

There were multiple iterations of this, but I ended up installing bigger pilots (#20) and later on also a bigger air-jet (#0.7), because it ran pig-rich on the needle and then was fine at the very top. I can only attribute this to swapping back to the stock ignition box and the Ignitech truly being more than just a bit unhappy, before it finally died in Winter. 

And then there was this stumble off idle and some VICIOUS engine vibrations under 3000rpm, when you opened the throttle. (Paired with a distinct lack of power.) Turns out, it was mostly running off only one cylinder until the other one kicked in. It was only a minor misadjustment, which is why I originally didn't trace it back to carb-sync.

With the engine running like it should, it was time to do something a lot more mundane, fitting a 12V power-outlet to the bike, so I can power a satnav or (more importantly, once I've got a plug for it) power my o2-sensor and finally use it under load. Also it will double as a socket to charge the battery.

I've long been running a spade-fuse instead of the stock fuse holder, so I added another cable (on the fused side), with a round contact so I can (easily) get the loom out when I have to take the bike apart again.

In case you're wondering – after running into a series of batteries failing prematurely, I started putting the start-date of their service-life on them.

Don't you find it weird, that I go through all this trouble and don't shed a word on how the engine now performs...? There's something cooking in the old engine-building kitchen.