I had a fairly productive day after killing a lot of the morning looking for suitable wire. I could find red and black everywhere, but you need more colors to help keep things straight when you’re hooking up a dozen different things. I ended up with black, red, green, yellow, blue and white.

The throttle bodies are mounted again, though they will need to come back off for a bit tomorrow. The wiring harness for the throttle body and the temperature sensors have connectors. The fuel pump is mounted and has a connector. The connector for the controller is wired, though I need to mark the function of some of the wires that use the same colors.

I go shopping in the morning and assuming tomorrow afternoon progresses as well as today, I may be trying to start Buzz by Wednesday or so, though with no oxygen sensor and using the stock ignition.

Tomorrow’s to-do list includes a little shopping, most importantly for a longer throttle cable. I only need about 4 inches more. The stock cable works as long as you don’t have to steer, especially to the right. Actually, it would work quite well for lefthand doughnuts.

I have decided to use the stock choke lever to operate the fast idle cam. I will hook the fast idle solenoid output to a light on the dash. When the light is on, work the lever. When the light goes out, return it.

More as it develops!

I have a week off work so I should have a week of quality wrench time with minimal interruption!

There has been little active progress with Buzz since my last update. I have also acquired a VW trike which has taken a good bit of my tinkering time. Of course, I am always looking at the trike and making plans to MegaSquirt it, too. LOTS of potential there. In fact, if I were so determined, I’m certain I could have it running well before Buzz, with only one semi-major purchase.

In any case, my plan is to see how close I can get to having Buzz running by the end of the week.

There is a long list of things to do. Some of it is parts fab and I imagine those things will take the biggest part of the time.

I need to get together a mounting plate for all the electrics. There will be relays, fuses, connectors, the controller itself and the EDIS module. I have ideas in my head; I’ll have to see if they will translate to reality.

Since I’m putting all this in the space where the airbox was, I also need a fender to keep dirt and perhaps more critically, water, out of the area. I would like to keep it as light as possible. Maybe I can use aluminum flashing. I once made a replacement fender for an RV using flashing and pop rivets, sealed with silicone.

Another kinda major fab I must do is the return line to the fuel tank. I think I will try to leave the stock petcock as is and add a fitting, perhaps sealed with epoxy. If I can satisfactorily make it safe to do so, I will braze the fitting in place instead. It will be much more secure.

I need to put an oxygen sensor in the exhaust. For the short term, I will use a narrow band sensor for cost reasons, but I hope to upgrade it. You can do so much more tuning if you know the exact O2 reading, as opposed to the go/no-go reading from the narrow band device. The wideband sensor could open the possibilities for running Buzz on alternate fuels, even propane.

The final big fab isn’t so much a big fab as a complex one. I can even skip it for a while if needed, but I need an ignition trigger wheel. I have in mind a pretty simple way to make one using my drill press and hand tools. It needs to be precise but not so precise that I can’t pull it off manually.

All I need after that is a longer throttle cable and to put all the stuff on the bike.

Well, for good results, the bike needs valves adjusted and oil changed and I’m sure the battery has gone bad in all these months of sitting idle.

For today, it looks like I might need to have plenty of MAPP for my torch.