This is something I've wanted to do for ages. Had throttle locks on my last three bikes but they never behaved in windy or hilly terrain.
Finally pulled my finger out and bought an AP60 cruise control unit from Auto One.
Reasonable instructions - I'd put one in my car before, this should be no different. Right? Ha!
Step one - fairings off, tank up.
Airbox out, make some room and have a look. Don't forget to cover the throttle flaps with some clean rag.
Where's the vacuum servo going to live? Eventually found a spot, and a bolt which fit. Tucked neatly under the throttle body. It's the black thing with the white sticker on it.
There was a blocked off stub of a vacuum line already hanging off the throttle body, so I just used that. Easy! The servo's throttle cable (not seen here) runs pretty much around the engine in a gentle loop and back to the throttle cable cam.
This was my first attempt - same as the setup in my car. Just piggybacks on the "on" cable.
Next the keypad. Of course, they're not waterproof. But now at least it's weatherproof. Probably. Thanks to one of the bags that the bits of the cruise came in, cut to shape and heatshrunk over the panel then taped in place.
Where did I leave my brain? Just behind the instrument cluster, where most of the bike wiring I needed to hook into collected in one place.
Unit needs to tap into power, ground and brake light. I used those crimp/cut connectors which just slide past the insulation. Much quicker and easier than cut/strip/twist/solder/tape. Neater too. And I can remove them easily if I ever want to remove the cruise from the bike.
Of course, you get a loom with the controller which is designed for a car - long distance stuff. With connectors on the end. Rather than chop/solder etc I just bundled the excess and cable tied it. What? Use a cable tie for TYING CABLE? What will he think of next?
The cruise control came with its own speedo pickup, designed to go with a couple of magnets somewhere on the tailshaft of a car. I didn't want to be hanging that kind of crap off my bike when I already had a perfectly working speedo sensor from the factory. So I tapped in. Turns out the cruise control brain is a little greedy signal pig and, when it was plugged in, my actual speedo would not read anything at all. Ended up fixing it by chopping the connector lead for the speedo line and placing a 100k resistor in series to up the input impedance of the brain. Little thingy on the third leg back from the connector.
Now everyone was happy and I could take my nekkid busa with crooz for a little ride around the block...
Holy shit!
Set it at 60km/h. Immediately tried to throw me off the seat as it took off. Got to 90km/h and shut down, trying again to throw me over the bars. Slowed down to 60 where it took off again, and so on.
Not, possibly, the ideal sensitivity setting...
I called and emailed the distributor/importer and was pretty much told these things were not designed for bikes and would I please be so kind as to remove it from mine before someone got hurt. Stuff that, already put too much effort into this project, IT WILL WORK!
Oh well, back to the drawing board. Throttles on bikes are twitchy. So how about I artificially reduce the sensitivity using a lever? It may just work. It DID just work. Pretty much extended the throttle cable 'cam' by putting a bit of plate over it, clamped into place with a couple of screws and connecting the servo throttle cable to the end of the plate instead of piggybacking the bike throttle cable. This took the crazy over-driving edge off the system.
And a picture of the 'clamp' screw. Looks dodgy but doesn't feel like it's going anywhere...
Time for a test ride. Off to Yanchep via Wanneroo Rd (Hi Bendito) with Megs on the back in case something went wrong again - it's nice to land on something soft.
Absolutely superb. Smooth actuation, accurate tracking except at really low speeds (ie 50) where it was just a little bit surgy.
Coming home though, I took the freeway. To Yanchep you're on 90 limits tops, so I thought here was a chance to try it with highway speeds. Uh uh, not happening.
Curses!
Nothing more than 90km/h, after that it just gave up.
Then I twigged. The AP60 automatically cuts out at 180km/h - guessed by the pulse frequency coming from the speedo sensor. Obviously the zook sensor setup uses a higher frequency so the cruise is getting confused. Somehow I need to "divide by two" going into the cruise, ie give its brain only one pulse for every two coming from the sensor.
Back to TCAG, the importer. "Yeah there used to be that function but we put it in firmware and you've used it already". Damn. I noticed (geek mode defcon 2 here) that there was a D-type latch chip on the controller board and had this fancy that I'd use an unused latch to do the divide by two.
Careful analysis of the circuit showed that:
a) This is in fact the function for which the chip was being used;
b) the input to the chip was ALSO the input to the 'brain'
c) nothing was connected to the output.
HAHAHAHAHA whoops geek bitch. All I had to do was run the output of that chip into the brain instead of the direct signal from the sensor. And wait - there was even a jumper to do that bypass. So I bypassed it. (Look for J3 in the middle. That's all it took. )
Back on the bike and off for a freeway test ride. It all works like a charm, fantastic stuff. No more worrying about speeding fines due to throttle creep, just set it and forget about it.
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that's what it would turn into, too, knowing my skillz with teh electronamenomical thingies. 


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