With the ECU wiring tidied up it was time to connect some stuff up. More crimping, soldering, wrapping and cable tie-ing saw the oil pressure sensors, oil temperature sensor and the coolant temp sensor all connected up and displaying correctly on the dash. I also sorted out the wiring for the adjustable radiator fan switch and its relay, all that’s left there is to connect the fan itself and run the wires to it from the relay.

During the week there was some bad news from Brian, Bob Hall of Concept Racing has been critically injured in an accident. Bob does all the mission critical TIG welding for Brian – the wishbones and all the aluminium welding such as the fuel tank and swirl pot and he was about to do the aluminium tubular frames that are used fore and aft to mount the bodywork. So this is likely to add another delay on top of that already caused by 4 weeks of pretty much continuous freezing temperatures that have prevented progress with the bodywork.

On Christmas Eve I managed to get out to the deep freeze garage and got a bit more wiring done. Some research had found reference to someone fitting a ZZR1400 engine in a buggy who had bypassed the tipover sensor (or vehicle down sensor as it’s referred to in the workshop manual) with a 68kΩ resistor. This is the same as on the Hayabusa so it’s likely the manufacturers are using the same unit. Basically the ECU supplies 5V and expects to see 4V out. A quick test showed it did indeed achieve this so I soldered that in and insulated it. I also wired in the reverse motor and did a quick test of that, then ran the wires for the fuel pump and fuel level sender. I still need to calibrate the sender but while out on my errands this morning I got 2 jerry cans of unleaded so hopefully can do that over the next few days.

Having been banned from the garage on Christmas Day I managed to sneak out on Boxing Day. First job was completing the reverse wiring. Rather than just supply the reverse motor directly from a switch I decided to wire it via a relay which gave me the ability to link it to the neutral switch so reverse can only be activated when the gearbox is in neutral. I also fitted a couple more switches to the dash, then moved on to the wire in the remaining relays for the headlights and the indicators. I got round to fitting the radiator fan and wired that up to its relay. In addition to the coolant temperature switch controlling this I’m also wiring in a manual switch, this allowed me to test it. I also managed to confirm that a 10 amp fuse isn’t enough for the fan …

On Bank Holiday Monday I managed a couple more hours, this time completing the wiring for the indicator and hazard switches, starter button and the fan switch. The dash wiring was now complete until I actually start connecting wires to lights, indicators etc. It needs a lot of tidying up but I can’t do this until the rest of the wiring is in place.

The next job to tackle is the fuel lines. The plumbing for this is fairly complex. The high pressure pump has a -6 threaded outlet on the tank, this needs to run to the fuel rail, with the fuel filter fitted inline, and the fuel pressure regulator teed off with a return from that to the tank. I was originally going to do these runs with standard rubber fuel hose but on Brian’s advice have got braided hose. By the time you get the hose and all the fittings this significantly escalates the expense but running braided hose within the engine bay makes sense although I guess if you’ve got a fire that is going long enough to burn through the rubber hose the additional protection offered by the braided hose is probably academic! In any case, it’s a one off expense. I haven’t made up braided hoses for a while and after struggling with the first one in my vice soft-jaws I decided to make myself a pair of simple aluminium jaw protectors using some aluminium angle. Once I’d done this the first fitting went together nicely.

Tuesday was again a Bank Holiday so a bit more garage time although I was in work for the afternoon/evening. I made some progress with the fuel hoses but it’s a pretty slow business and making up a bracket for the fuel pressure regulator took a time. Fitting 6 of the Aeroquip anodised fittings while only spearing a finger once is quite an achievement The fittings onto the fuel pump outlet on the tank, the fuel filter and the fuel pressure sender adapter are all threaded -6 but those on the fuel rail, the fuel pressure regulator and the T-piece required are all standard push fit. By the time it was time to go to work the hoses were all pretty much done apart from the tank breather. With a couple more of the pipe clips tightened and the fuel pressure sensor fitted to the inline adapter (see pic below) I’ll be ready to slosh a bit of petrol in the tank and see if there are any leaks. If the fuel pump works of course.

On New Year’s Eve I finished off the fuel lines then fitted and wired in the fuel pressure sensor. With that done I sorted out my temporary filler cap – the trouble here was that the hose is 38mm ID but so is the filler neck so it wouldn’t fit as the hose doesn’t stretch. Half an hour with a block of acetal in the lathe and I turned up a sleeve to fit snugly inside the filler neck. Once that was done I sloshed a bit of fuel in the tank and ran a wire direct from the fuse box to check the pump was working OK. It did but the DigiDash was showing 1psi on the fuel pressure, with a few turns on the screw adjuster on top of the regulator I soon had it at the requisite 44psi.

I was now getting closer to being able to attempt to start the engine. I can’t locate my oil cooler yet so I just fitted a 90° elbow on each end of my oil hose and ran it in a loop out of the take off adapter and back into it again. The engine then received 4 litres of Silkolene 15w50. Next job was to fit hose clamps on the radiator hoses and fill the system with coolant. This went slightly wrong as I forgot about the small outlet on the water pump that on the bike runs to the oil/water intercooler so I turned a little aluminium blank to fit in a short length of hose and clamped that in place.

With the plugs out I turned the engine over to see if I could get any visible oil pressure. This unsurprisingly took ages as it had to pump the oil round the length of hose first, but it eventually got up to 26psi. I then stuck the plugs back in and decided it was time. Having done this several times now I suppose I’m getting a bit cocky and I expected the engine to start on the first attempt. And indeed it did! It was making a terrible racket of course with no exhaust system on but it was great to be able to finally blip the throttle and see the blue flames out of the exhaust ports. So, that’s another huge milestone achieved and I can now get on with sorting out the other odds and ends like calibrating the fuel level sender, fabricating a mount for the clutch slave cylinder and sorting out a gear change linkage.

I decided to revise some of the wiring. I’d taken my main supply for the fuse box directly from the isolator switch but on the bike the batter lead goes to the starter solenoid and the fuse box supply is taken from there. I decided to make us of this wire since it will then take the supply via the main 30A fuse. Once this was done I added the Power Commander to the mix, securing its wiring to the loom passing behind the throttle bodies. There’s enough room below the regulator to fit it to the tank cover but I decided to leave that until later.

Next I ran the main ignition switched supply from the fuse box back to the engine bay then made a start on temporarily connecting up the wiring required for the interlocks for the ECU. This means earthing the wires that were associated with the clutch switch and the side stand. I also confirmed that the neutral switch was working correctly, which it was, earthing when the gearbox is in neutral. I then tentatively connected the ignition to the ECU supply checking carefully for sparks. If the ECU’s happy then it earths a brown/yellow wire which is used to switch on the fuel pump relay, this then supplies the fuel pump and injectors etc. I was hoping to see this wire earth for a few seconds then become isolated again but it wasn’t happening. It was late in the day so I abandoned. I’ve retained the connection for the bike instrument panel but a set of clocks hasn’t been forthcoming from Mal Curnin at Yorkshire Engines – this would be really helpful at this stage to display the ECU fault codes.

Overnight an idea came to me, although I’d connected the Power Commander inline with the fuel injection loom I hadn’t connected its earth and this would likely mean that the ECU wouldn’t ‘see’ the throttle position sensor and therefore decide there was a fault. So I waded out through the snow to the garage on Saturday morning, took the Power Commander out of the circuit and tried again. With no joy, although the ECU seemed to be functioning as it was zeroing the secondary throttle butterflies via their servo motor. After loads more poring over wiring diagrams I was convinced I’d got the wiring right and couldn’t understand why the fuel pump relay wire from the ECU wasn’t being earthed – the relay receives a 12v supply from the ignition switch and the relay is then switched via this brown/yellow wire going to the ECU. It was really freezing in the garage so I could only manage short bursts out there before needing to go in to thaw my hands and feet out. Then I had another thought and tried measuring the potential between the ignition wire and the brown/yellow and hey presto I got 12 volts across the two wires for a couple of seconds when I turned the ignition on, which is exactly what I expected – the ECU then switches the fuel pump off till it senses that the engine is turning. At this point I hadn’t trimmed back or tidied up any of the wiring and it was a little on the untidy side as you can see in this pic.

Flushed with success I could then set about tidying up the wiring. What I’d decided to do was to use a multi-connector again so that the main car loom and the engine loom could be easily disconnected and reconnected again. Excluding my additional coolant temp sender wires there were a total of 13 wires from the bike loom to be connected into although some of those requiring an ignition supply or earth could be combined. So I ended up using an 11 way connector into which I could also incorporate my coolant temp sensor wires. As you can see in the accompanying photo it looked much tidier after this.

On Sunday morning I set about connecting some of the engine bay stuff up to the front of the car. The first thing I was keen to do was make sure the fuel pump relay worked, to check both that it was switched as I thought and to check that it was happy switching a normal relay rather than the bike specific one. And indeed it was. I wanted to move onto connecting up the sensors so I could check the DigiDash was seeing them OK but I hadn’t yet fitted the oil pressure sensor. This is a dual output unit with both a low pressure warning switch and the output for the pressure gauge, screwing them direct into the engine means the vibration rapidly kills them so I needed to fit the remote braided hose and adapter kit. This took a little time to get fitted and clipped to the fuel tank cover, I then spent a bit of time getting the wiring for the sensors sorted out before I ran out of time.

With impeccable timing I was out of the country on hols the last week of November while most of Britain froze. Although our part of South Wales had very little snow we did have some very low temperatures resulting in a frozen pipe in the garage which then burst as soon as it thawed so David had to sort out a plumber. Meanwhile I was diving in the Bahamas in my shorty wetsuit in 26° water.

On my return I had a chat with Brian who was quite frustrated as the very cold weather had made any progress on the bodywork impossible as the fibreglass resin is simply unworkable at such low temperatures.

Anyway, quite a few things got in the way of a prompt return to the garage but I did get out there for about 3 hours on the Sunday after I got back. It was pretty cold so the propane heater got called into action. I carried on with the wiring – having run the main power supply from the battery isolator switch alongside the switching wire I tidied up the run forward to the dash. I also fitted a small aluminium panel to act as a dash and mounted the fuse box on the aluminium sheet fixed over the passenger footwell. At the end of play I’d fitted and connected the internal master isolator latching push button and the main ignition switch. I connected the live supply to three of the terminals on the fuse box and to the ignition switch then connected the switched supply from the ignition switch to the other 5 terminals on the fusebox. This took quite a while as all the terminals are crimped and soldered then insulated with heat shrink. It doesn’t seem massive progress but it does now pave the way to get on with wiring in the DigiDash and getting going with the rest of the wiring.

On Monday I ordered a few more bits and pieces, hopefully enough stuff to get the fuel plumbing done and to get the wiring complete. The search for a chain continues – Brian was thinking of buying a roll of uncut chain and eventually persuaded the DID importer to sell him one but the cost is prohibitive and it works out cheaper just buying a bike chain and cutting it down even though it wastes quite a bit – the shortest 530 chain available is 102 links and I only need 78. In the end I got a very good deal from M&P who were already offering about the best price that I could find for the chain but a decent discount made it a no brainer.

One problem I experienced with the Fury was dash visibility, I ended up bringing my DigiDash forward onto the steering column to avoid the steering wheel obscuring it. Brian’s approach on the BDN has been to mount it on a bracket just to the left of the steering wheel. I didn’t have any heavy enough aluminium sheet to make a robust bracket so I ordered a short length of 3mm 4″x4″ aluminium angle from Ebay. I then spent a couple of cold hours in the garage on Thursday cutting/filing this into shape and drilling the holes to fix it on there and to allow the connectors through.

Friday was milder but hardly what you’d call balmy, but I got quite a lot of time in. I finished off the dash bracket and got that mounted so it was angled directly towards where my head will be. Then it was time to start wiring it up. The DigiDash comes with quite a lot of pre-assembled cables but the wires for the sensors are in a leash of 13 separate wires, so I decided to try to do this a bit more neatly than on the Fury where I just used bullet connectors for each wire. So I used a couple of multi-connectors from Vehicle Wiring Products – on reflection it would probably have been more sensible to get their mini-connectors but I know the ones I’ve got work nicely as I’ve used them for the front and rear lighting looms on the Fury. 7 of the wires go to sensors in the engine bay so they went into an 8 way block then the remaining 6 wires went into a 6 way block.

The main logger box of the DigiDash system contains G sensors in the longitudinal and lateral axes and for these to work properly it likes to be level, so I made up a small bracket to sit that on. With that in place I could start connecting wires up. For a power feed to the dash I wanted it a bit more clever than just coming on with the ignition switch as it’s handy to be able to have the dash on without the ignition but conversely I don’t really want it on all the time the master switch is on either. So it has a dual supply, one via its own switch from the unswitched side of the fuse box and the other via the ignition switch (so I can’t switch the dash off when the ignition’s on, I don’t think Mr. IVA would like that much). I’ve used a double pole switch as the ignition switch so the dash supply can’t energise the ignition side.

Once I’d made up the wires it was time to test it and it does indeed work as intended. This was the first sign of any life in the car so quite a step forward really. Once it had gone through its boot sequence it of course complained that it didn’t have any sensors connected, so I thought I might look at those next. The adapter I got from Car Builder Solutions to screw the water temp sensor in is actually an M10 fine thread but they reckoned it would take a 1/8″NPTF thread OK as they’re very similar and indeed it did fit. I used a bit of threadlock as sealant in case, the adapter helpfully has a separate screw to fix the earth connection to.

I also had to do a bit of hacking of the top hose as I needed to fit the fan switch. This is an inline adapter similar to the temp sensor but has a little rotary switch to adjust the switching temperature. It also comes with its own little loom and a relay making it pretty easy to install but I ran out of time before I could do anything with the wiring.

On Saturday morning I took off the oil cooler adapter to fit the oil temperature sender. The ETB sender is 1/8″ NPTF and while researching buying a tap I discovered that it would fit in a 1/8″BSP thread and it seems it’s pretty standard practice to do this. This was good news since I already have a 1/8″BSP tap. So I decided whereabouts on the adapter I wanted the sender then marked it and got on with it. It always makes me nervous drilling into fairly expensive parts but it’s fairly soft aluminium and is pretty thick with plenty of room to locate the thing. This all went pretty well using the pillar drill and plenty of oil when tapping it. I then fitted the sender with some threadlock and replaced the adapter onto the engine.

As I was finishing that off I had a visitor – Colin Chapman came round. For the non-RGB racing reader no, not that Colin Chapman. Colin is a friend who races a Fury in RGB but has now decided to build himself a BDN next year so he came to have a look at the car and talk about the build. He hasn’t actually built a car before so he’s a bit apprehensive and I think like many he makes the dangerous assumption that people like me actually know what they’re doing rather than working most of it out as they go along!

I decided that before I could make much more progress with the wiring I needed to get on with the engine loom. It’s a while since I looked at this and once draped in the engine bay it resembled a random assortment of multicoloured spaghetti. We just worked our way round matching up the main connectors then I started working out what other bits I could chop out. The challenging bit is working out the wiring associated with the fuel pump and starter relays. Before the ECU will allow you to turn the engine over it insists on knowing the bike’s in neutral or has the clutch in and the sidestand is up. There’s also a tipover sensor and unless that’s vertical the engine won’t run. For the latter options include mounting the unit securely so it’s vertical, filling its insides with gloop so it always thinks it’s vertical or the more elegant solution of replacing it with an appropriate resistor which is what I’ve done on the Fury. I can’t find out what resistor to use for the ZX10 so I might experiment a bit.

Orienting the loom correctly took an inordinate amount of time but having done it before I expected that. I seem to spend loads of time just sitting looking at the damn thing but it does require that you’re methodical. It doesn’t help that the ZX10 wiring diagram is in black and white, the coloured Haynes wiring diagrams are much easier to use. In the end I discovered that my printer driver allowed me to do a poster print of a single page onto 4 pages of A4, so the 2 page wiring diagram then became 8 pages which I trimmed and taped together. I then went over the key wires with coloured pencils making it much easier to follow what went where.

I decided some time ago to do away with the bike relays – they’re packaged in a single box containing 5 relays for the fan, headlight, fuel pump and the starter circuit plus an unused relay. 3 connectors go into the box so if I retained it I would have quite a few redundant wires and would need to find a home for the box. I did start to regret this decision as it makes getting round the interlocks a bit trickier – rather than just shorting out the sidestand switch, kill switch and the clutch switch I needed to work out what effect these have on the 3 wires to the ECU.

On Sunday I seemed to spend most of the morning poring over the wiring diagram trying to work out exactly what the wires involved in the start circuit relay actually did. After lunch I actually made it out into the garage and continued work on the loom. I bundled together all the wires I’ll need to connect in to then set about taping up the rest. I then made a bracket for the ECU and fixed this and the regulator/rectifier to the tank cover on the far left of the car as far away from the engine and exhaust heat as I could get them. Once this was done I sorted out the rectifier output making up a separate lead taking this directly to the battery positive thus preventing it from causing the engine to run on when the power was switched off. I also grafted in a big wire to connect the multitude of earth wires on the bike loom to the chassis.

So, it might seem like I haven’t got very far but in fact it’s all looking a bit tidier and I’m almost ready to start connecting into the bike wiring.