Chris W

I am now aware of Chris Good's buy as he has emailed me directly. (The guy at Ecliptech made no mention of anyone else's buying a quantity in the UK). If Chris can get them for £72 inc VAT, carriage and customs charges paid then that's great. I'll step aside. Why didn't someone mention this earlier before I wasted so much time on emails to Oz? Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

That's correct Tom - flat casing - I forgot to mention that Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

I am in discussion with Ecliptech for a bulk-buy of the Shift-i shift lights. The price, based on current exchange rates with Oz, is indeed £60 per unit BUT there would be around £10 postage charges per unit plus customs clearance charges and customs will charge VAT on each unit. So I anticipate that the final end price will be around £80 - £85 landed. By taking advice from people who know more about importing than me, I will do everything I can to keep the charges to a minimum but I want to work with a worst-case scenario to eliminate "stragglers" I am prepared to administer and fund this shipment but Ecliptech need a confirmed order for 30+ units to meet this price. As I do not want to get stuck with shiftlights as gifts for everyone in my family at Xmas this year, how many people would be prepared to COMMIT DEFINITELY at around this price? I don't want "possibles", "probables" or "looks interesting", only people who will not later back out and will pay on-the-dot when asked. The batch would be the version with 7 LEDs which are coloured GGGGAAR (where G=green; A=amber & R=red). As you will have read earlier, I have confirmed that they will work with all 7 ignition variants (viz: wasted and normal spark versions). Fitting is a doddle (3 wires only - +12v, earth & tacho input). The instruction booklets (which can be downloaded) are very comprehensive and easy to follow. You can also fit these to your motorbike or tintop too if desired so you're not limited to one each! Let me know your reactions Chris Edited to say: I would also act as the technical support on these too rather than having to contact Oz directly. 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here Edited by - Chris W on 10 Jul 2006 15:32:06

More good news: I mentioned that the Caterham 7 fraternity may have a big interest in this product so the guy at Shift-i (EclipTech) has emailed me back to say: -------------------------------------------------- Hi Chris, Certainly. The setting is the “Calibration Value”, page 4 of the attached “User Manual”. I should update the installation manual to be specific about this setting. There is also an “Advanced Settings Manual”, however its really to tweak settings which most people don’t concern themselves with. If you have enough interest, at least 5+ people, then let me know. We often assist clubs with group deals and combined shipping. Cheers, Tony -------------------------------------------------------------- Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

Yes, thanks, I have found it now. It's in the User Manual and I had been looking in the Installation Manual. 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

Wow.......... I have had a response back from Shift-i almost immediately - the guy must have a laptop in bed! It appears they do indeed have an adjustment to correct for pulses-per-sec (although I can't spot it in the installation instructions). Their response to my question above is: --------------------------------------------------------- Hi Chris, It has no problem with operating on a wasted spark ignition setup. You can easily set it for 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 5, 6 & 8 pulses per revolution. Cheers, Tony ----------------------------------------------------------- Being able to set the pulses-per-revolution means that it can also cope with a wide range of cylinder numbers as well. There you go - solved Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

I have emailed the Shift-i people in Australia to ask about how they cope with wasted vs normal spark ignition as I am only surmising so it's better to get it from the horse's mouth. I have asked them: "Enquiry: ------------------------------------------------------------ How does the unit cope with "wasted-spark" ignition which will produce twice as many pulses-per-second at the tacho input as compared to "normal-spark" ignition? How does one correct the reading when setting up a wasted or normal spark installation? Thanks Chris" ------------------------------------------------------------- Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here Edited by - Chris W on 10 Jul 2006 11:05:00

Martin The K series is wasted-spark and the ECU does give double the number of pulses to the tacho. eg: at say 3000rpm one would expect to measure a pulse rate of 50Hz. If you connect a scope (or a multimeter that measures frequency) to the tacho input you will read 100Hz on the meter for a K-series and 50Hz for a normal ignition 7 variant. it's on their website under FAQ's and states: "The RPM measurement algorithm does not use the basic pulse counting technique, or frequency to voltage converters. The RPM is digitally calculated per pulse!" I assume what they mean by "digitally calculated" is that they gate a timer to start on the leading edge of each pulse and end the timing on the leading edge of the next pulse. The electronics calculates the reciprocal of the time between pulses which is of course the frequency of the pulse input . (Due to wasted-spark considerations, this is not necessarily the same as engine revs so it's still not clear to me how they are overcoming this). This pulse timing technique would also explain the "sensitivity" adjustment they have. Since an engine can never exactly hold a set frequency (rpm figure) a measurement based on every single pulse would hunt up and down very rapidly, so I assume that by tweaking the sensitivity control, what one is actually doing is telling the electronics how many pulses to ignore before it makes a new measurement to average out the reading. Just a guess but I would bet that's what's happening. Please don't get me wrong Martin, I'm not trying to rubbish this piece of kit. It looks a really good buy at £60. I'm just exploring the in-and-outs in more detail as I do have some electronics knowledge in this area. I'm not trying to sell you one of mine instead - I can only make a handful anyway as I am not set up to do a production run and I don't make any real money on them anyway even at a much higher price. It's just that something that seems too good to be true, often is and I'm just trying to help everyone with some pertinent questions. Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

Myles They state it's "splashproof" rather than "waterproof" which they say means it must be operated behind a windscreen. I suspect this is the same as all shiftlight units. Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here Edited by - Chris W on 10 Jul 2006 09:53:37

Martin The unit is not pulse counting because the manufacturers state it is not. The set-up manual instructs you to match the reading on the tacho and so it does appear to use the tacho as the "reference". Trust me - the wasted-spark systems give twice as many pulses per cycle because they're producing a spark on the power stroke AND the exhaust stroke - hence "wasted" spark. That's why, on my design of shiftlights, there is a jumper option for normal or wasted-spark. If you set this option incorrectly the shiftlights would read either twice as high or half as high in revs depending which way round is incorrect. This option is also present on the standard Caterham tacho too, for the same reason. The reason why wasted-spark systems works like this is that it makes the coil electronics and spark distribution much simpler if you produce a spark on every other stroke per cylinder rather than on every 4th stroke (the power stroke) per cylinder as in "normal" ignition. Thus you get a spark on the power stroke AND the exhaust stroke (although the latter contributes no power) but the tacho doesn't know the difference and just integrates pulses. Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

The "CatShift" is £100. Even at that price I'm barely above minimum wage once you deduct the price of materials and components. It takes me a day to produce the circuit board, then build and test one from scratch. But you do get first class customer-service for that price!! One member, who has just bought one, had a really neat idea. I will be supplying the (9) LEDs on a separate circuit board connected to the main unit box by a flying lead, rather than incorporated into the box, so that he can mount them directly into the dashboard with the box itself hidden underneath. Chris Edited to say: I forgot to mention that the LEDs are 3 green, 3 yellow and 3 red 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here Edited by - Chris W on 9 Jul 2006 23:49:45

Mine works by pulse counting so is totally accurate. It can be set up for any rev range and each LED can be set to any rpm setting. They don't have to be equally spaced in rpm value, although most people want it that way. There is a jumper to select normal or wasted spark and a second jumper to select all LEDs flashing at max revs or not. The LEDs can be manually dimmed too (the auto-dim on the Aussie one is a neat idea and not difficult to implement so I may do that). However, I build these just out of interest as I really enjoy circuit design, and not for profit, so I can't match the £60 price because I only make a couple of dozen total. There is a tremendous amount of work and time involved in individually printing, etching and drilling the circuit-boards and then soldering in the components and then testing each unit in-situ. So no chance of coming close on price - I would need 100's to do it commercially. I spent a lot of time designing the unit and indeed, at first, I used a similar method to the one that I believe the Aussies are using. It worked really well but eventually I scrapped it and redesigned it using a microprocessor to pulse-count, because I wanted accuracy and stability just from a pedantic circuit-design point of view. It was a very interesting intellectual exercise to figure out how to do it. Since it worked, I offered it to club members but had no visions of selling more than a handful. Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

Mav I wasn't trying to be a smart-arse, as your veiled sarcasm implied, but in fact I was indeed trying to help you by asking what I thought were 2 very relevant and important questions. £60 is a good price so long as it functions to your expectations. Most people want shift-lights to replace the (inaccurate) tacho read-out not just to get an LED copy of it. And the normal/wasted-spark issue is a real one. It won't work with both automatically. It doesn't know it should ignore half the pulses unless there's some way of telling it and there's nothing in the documentation about spark systems. Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

Having read the installation manual, two thoughts occur to me. These thoughts are based on the fact I have designed and built my own set of shiftlights so I understand the different options available to measure the rpm circuit-wise. 1. It appears that the unit is calibrated against the tacho, viz: according to the installation manual, one has to adjust the shift-lights to match the tacho readout. The problem on a lot of (most) 7's is that the tacho is notoriously inaccurate and so the shift-lights will be wrong too. The manufacturers have this issue because they are NOT using pulse counting to measure the rpm (as they state themselves in their marketing material). But the only way to get a truly accurate rpm measurement is to count the pulses over a predetermined period (a fraction of a second). I would guess they are using an "integration" method to determine revs, viz: the higher the number of input pulses, the higher the average voltage input and the higher the average voltage the higher the number of LEDs that are lit. This is why, I presume, they are having to incorporate an "anti-flicker" adjustment for when the average voltage is hovering around the next trigger-point. 2. No mention is made of how one uses them with normal and/or wasted-spark ignition. Wasted-spark ignition will give twice as many pulses for any particular revs and therefore provision needs to be made to allow for this. I am assuming that most bikes (which seem to be their target market) are probably wasted-spark so the unit may be OK with say K-series 7's, which have wasted-spark ignition, but will read at half rate for normal ignition engines. As I say, I can find no mention of this in their documentation. Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

Kipper That'll be OK then. It'll be coming from around the fusebox. Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

Graham It's white/black. On my ECU (EU3) it's pin 55 on the smaller ECU connector. Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

Stu Glad you've sorted it. As Sherlock Holmes once remarked, "When you've eliminated the improbable, only the impossible remains!" Well done Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

Kipper what's that??? The fuse box only has live (12v) feeds in it. Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

Kipper That's exactly what I mean. Contact me via Blatchat if you do want to come over here sometime. Edited to ask: From where are you taking the +12v and earth connections for the Omex, just in case the supply is very"dirty" at that point? Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here Edited by - Chris W on 4 Jul 2006 11:26:48

Nick If the problem is indeed that the Alpha unit only gives out 3v, it is very easy electronically to design a small interface box which would take 3v input and give out 5v or 12v or whatever your sytem actually needs. I could knock one out for you for about £20; the cost and time is actually in designing, etching, drilling and soldering the printed-circuit board not in the components for this circuit. Edited to say: If the tacho is reading at 50%, did you change from a wasted-spark system to a normal-spark system as that would also account for the difference? The tachos have tiny switches on them which can be set for normal or wasted-spark ignition and the number of cylinders. Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here Edited by - Chris W on 4 Jul 2006 10:17:05

Kipper Can you possibly disconnect the black/white lead from the back of the tacho but leave that lead connected to the Omex and try again. It might be that the Omex is loading the tacho. I have designed my own shift lights and I had to take the tacho loading into consideration so I incorporated an extra transistor stage so that the shift lights and the tacho can't "see" each other but both can use the pulses coming along the black'white wire. The other likely cause (although you would need an oscilloscope to see it) is that the pulses coming into the tacho are full of electrical "noise", viz: spikes etc rather than being reasonably clean square-shaped pulses. These spikes are probably large enough to trigger the Omex and so it is counting more pulses than there are in reality. Omex should have designed their circuit to "clean up" these raggedy pulses. What they mean by "RF interference" (RF = Radio Frequency) is probably more likely the spikes above, viz: the Omex is mistakenly counting additional pulses but I don't believe it's RF generated; the circuit design should take care of that and why should your car be more RF prone than any other? I notice you live in Hertfordshire and I'm in Bedfordshire (nr Dunstable) so if you can get over here, I'll put it on my 'scope and we can see what's really happening. Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

Stu If you still have the old sender, can you also measure the resistance between its pin and its body. As you will understand from the Electrickery article, the replacement sender must have the same resistance characteristic or otherwise the gauge will read incorrectly. (I am assuming you kept the same gauge and only swapped the sender). Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

Stu Can you measure the following resistances: (I'll call the pins 1 & 2) 1. Between Pin 1 and the sender body 2. Between Pin 2 and the sender body 3. Between pins 1 & 2 After you got full deflection on the gauge, did you try swapping the wires on pins 1 & 2 over to see if that made any difference? To understand how the gauge works, see my Electrickery Article No. 2 here Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

That was quick.....Thanks Tom. Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here

I have just discovered the screw part of one of the nose cone Dzus clips is missing from my SV. Where's the easiest place to get a replacement? thanks Chris 2003 1.8K SV 140hp see it here