A New First for Me - Electronic Flywheel

[Adam_Winstone]

Many years ago I had a S3 bitsa in for general work to get this overpriced and unreliable bad purchase suitable for road use. TBH I only took it on as a favour to a mutual friend and I wish it had never darkened my door! However, that's another matter. The issue being that it has cone to haunt me again now.

Said bike came to me with an intermittent spark and it turned out to have one of those Indian aftermarket flywheels that had the boss rivet holes in a position that wouldn't allow the timing to be adjusted to anything useable, which swapping between points or electronic centre bosses could not fix. Also, no amount of elongating the adjustment slot would resolve. The 'fix' by previous had been to snap off the adjustment lugs and to fit penny washers to allow more rotation. Basically, this was indicative of this bikes build standard throughout, as were the frayed stator wires and dodgy mixed connectors... absolute rubbish parts and build.

The bikes went back out as a rally ready runner, replacement ignition provided. The guy turned out to be a complete nightmare and bad debtor and went to ground, leaving me with a loss and the few crappy bits taken off the bike, which is where the haunting comes back into this (sorry for those still looking for the S3 Technical bit... LOL).

Having kept the mid-weight flywheel in my emergency spares corner, I recently decided that I would look to swap bosses again and see what could be achieved by spending some time on it. The bike that this is to be used on still runs an LI taper crank so a mid or light weight flywheel is a must IMO. Thankfully, I have managed to use an Indian stator that has unusually wide adjustment slots (even for Indian) and filing one side to the extreme has allowed me to get the timing to an appropriate range.

HOWEVER... and this is the reason for this post...

For the first time in my experience, the bolt-in centre boss that gives me a degree of timing success (I don't often get the chance to drop in an ignition pun) has an incorrectly machined area for the nut! Whilst most people will be aware that later flywheel nuts have a smaller outer diameter and deeper shoulder than earlier models, this aftermarket boss has too small a diameter centre, which doesn't allow any of my range of GP nuts to fit! I've ended up having to resolve this by reducing the outer diameter of a small nut even further!

Anyway, a new one on me and one that might have others scratching their heads at some stage.

Ah, the joy of bits that don't fit without fettling.