PC800 Fuel Injection – Page 7 – Not Your Average Engineer

April 28, 2014

Coolant Temperature Sensor Installed and Most Wiring Done for PC800 Fuel Injection Conversion

I installed the coolant temperature sensor in line with one of the coolant lines coming off the engine heads. It will restrict coolant flow a little but hopefully not enough to hurt the PC800 engine. I had to improvise with some coolant hose that I had laying around the shop to fit. I will need to check for leaks once I have the fuel injection system up and running, and the engine hot and coolant system operating at pressure.

Wiring is coming along well. I am done with wiring in the coolant temperature sensor, the throttle position sensor, the manifold air pressure sensor in the throttle body, the air pressure sensor that will live somewhere else on the bike to monitor atmospheric pressure, the intake air temperature sensor, and the fuel injectors. I also connected the relay for the high pressure fuel pump. Next up is to connect the spark pulse sensor wiring and the spark generator wiring. I’ve decided that I’m going “all in” and will have the MicroSquirt control the spark system, too.

I still need to wire in the indicator LEDs and the tilt sensor. Also I need to think about how the run/stop (kill) switch on the handlebars will get wired into the setup. Maybe I will use it to cut the relay power to the fuel pump.

It looks like next weekend I should be able to start tuning the bike. Exciting times ahead!

April 28, 2014April 28, 2014

Installation of a High Pressure Fuel Pump on the PC800

After yet another test ride where I had fuel pouring out of the overflow on the carbs, I decided that I was done trying to diagnose an intermittent problem in the stock fuel system on my PC800. Yes, it has finally become time to install the fuel injection system that I have been working on for several years.

The first course of action was to install the high pressure fuel pump I bought off ebay from a 2010 Honda Fury. After some modification to the PC800 plastics and relocating the wiring harness plugs, I was able to fit in the high pressure fuel pump.

Purists will not like how I had to cut part of the plastics out to make the pump just slightly visible from the outside. Then again, purists aren’t interested in fuel injecting a PC800.

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With the trunk lid closed, a little bit of the fuel pump is visible. I can live with that.

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I drilled through a spare PC800 fuel cap to make a return line for the high pressure fuel pump.

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Some high temp RTV helps hold everything together. It isn’t a perfect or a pretty setup but I didn’t want to have to drop out the existing gas tank and put in the gas tank I modified several years ago. Maybe down the road I will do that but for now this works well.

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High and low pressure lines routed up from the fuel pump. I should note that I do not have a low pressure boost pump installed at the moment although I think that I will end up having to put one in in order to access the lower half of the fuel tank. Testing will be needed before I can make that determination.

The Honda Fury throttle body and fuel injection intake manifold near the position where it will be once everything is installed. I am going to hang a UNIPOD or similar filter off the front of this. I still need to figure out where I can pull vacuum from on this setup for the secondary MAP sensor I am running to do on-the-fly altitude correction.

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Top-down view. I am going to be using some wide diameter fuel hose with 90 degree bends pre-made to connect the injector intake body with the PC800 engine intakes. It isn’t the best way to do it but I don’t want to pay for a 3D printed metal intake adapter. Maybe down the road I will do that.

Here is a picture of the “brains” of the MicroSquirt that will be running the entire show.

More to come soon!

March 16, 2012March 16, 2012

And then there were four: The Nekked PC (Honey Badger Morcycle) joins the flock

About a month ago a fourth motorcycle joined my Japanese Iron stables. The fabled “Nekked PC,” a PC800 that had been stripped of almost all of its plastics and ratted out, had come up for sale on the IPCRC. An email exchange with the original owner of this 1989 Honda PC800 Pacific Coast followed. The owner was nice enough to trailer this bike up from California to Corvallis in exchange for a very reasonable amount of money. And thus the Nekked PC became mine for the purpose of finishing the fuel injection conversion project that I have been slowly completing over the last year.

As you can see, over 100 lbs of plastics have been stripped from the bike. The bike takes on an entirely new handling characteristic without all of the extra mass and wind resistance. It has taken some getting used to in order to anticipate what the bike will do.

The original headlight and instrument cluster remained on the bike. This gives it a strange, raked-out look that I kind of like. I am considering cannibalizing the headlight housing in order to build an HID projector and angel eye effect into the stock housing on my other PC800, The TARDIS.

Yes, those are two Mercedes car horns. They would never fit under the plastic of a fully plasticized PC800 and they rub on the shocks but they work very well. It is a nice after-market touch.

With all of the harnesses exposed, this is a bike meant for fair weather. Also note that this is a California model and has the emissions control equipment intact and fully functional.

The rear fender is from a dirt bike.

This is from just after I got the license plate for the bike.

It definitely has a post-apocalyptic fell to it. I haven’t decided yet if I will try to find another set of plastics to recover the bike with or if I will leave it as-is and pass it on to the next owner once my fuel injection project is complete.

One final note: Heather has decided that this motorcycle should be called the HBM (Honey Badger Motorcycle) because it doesn’t care that it’s naked.