Great work,I have always admired the fork brace myself, no idea why.The only thing I don't like are those mirrors.I think it needs more stealth,like maybe something round mounted under the bars.
Nice ride!

The mirrors are really more a utilitarian thing. I wanted something black I could actually use and these fit the bill. I would like something smaller or possibly the under bar solution, but I have ridden bikes with those and am not satisfied for much street use. Maybe as I continue refining the bike something more to my liking will appear . . .

Ah yes the dreaded form must meet function dilemma.You need the high POV for city riding or at least a POV that is spread wide enough to see the next lane I understand that.I think They are kind of dangerous offroad though.I have seen some mounted on the ends of the grips also that would give good coverage but again offroad though maybe safer, they would not last very long if you were to drop it.Maybe you could fashion some kind of mast that you could flip when needed and maybe an oval to match that sexy sunburst logo.

An excellent tale of bike building, injury (ouch!) and general good humour.
The bike looks wicked!!
Well done!

Thanks Bradder and welcome to the site! It was a labour of love.

The bike has a few refinements to go but it is not a garage queen! It is a blast to motor around on.

Well - the sun Tanke Gravel Tracker is back under the knife!

Seems no project is ever really done if you actually ride them.

In any event - the bike was originally slated to receive a 1975 DT400 ignition, but a few things intervened trying to get it prepped for Moab in 2013. It ended up with a working, but very used stock points system, and I didn't want to risk it not making that trip.

After a ride home on my trailer (in a monsoon) from the SEIGE vintage show in Seattle in January, I eventually discovered the rain had filled up a bunch of the stator cavity. My rubber stator seal was not well seated apparently. So when I went out to do some testing of the Pardue Products new Rectifier (review on that soon) the bike refused to run. I finally got it going, but it was running crappy.

Time to resume the CDI conversion! I will document the process in a separate thread shortly, but we made a bit of progress today.

As some will recall, DEET built me the equivalent of 4 almost NOS stators. This bike was to receive the first of those. In order to do the conversion, and not cut wires, he built me a special plug and play adapter. I did need to add two additional bits - a hellos "y" cable to add a regulator under the seat, and a short extension on the coil. I have now gotten most of that work done, and we have spark!

The bike also needs a bit of shifter tweaking, and I may go with some slightly softer rear suspension. Not sure yet.

In any event, more posts soon on the conversion, as well as the Pardue regulator test! Film at 11:00!

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OK - We have success - at least in part.




The above schematic shows the wiring needed to install the DT400B ignition into a DT1/DT2/RT1/RT2 bike. Note that there are a couple of special things needed for the conversion, including the Stator, Flywheel CDI box AND the Coil from a DT360, DT400B or DT400C. You need the whole setup to make it all work. The CDI box should be marked F8T 00172 Mitsubishi.

First, you remove the old flywheel, stator and coil. Set aside for a later E-bay ad to help pay for this.

Install the new Stator plate.



The most difficult part of the whole job is to get the plugs on the new stator through the little hole in the case. It looks like this, and neither of the larger connectors will fit.



STart by removing the female blade connectors from the white plastic connector. (Yellow, Green and Black wires). Then, on the black rubber connector, carefully take a razor knife and slice between the one female and the two male connectors. If done carefully, you will end up with a single female and a double male connector both which will fit through the hole in the case. (You should also have sourced and figured out a way to create a grommet to seal the hole after you get them through.)

Starting on the picture, we will do the connections labeled "B" first.

Once the wires are through the case, you can tape the black rubber connector together (Or use heat shrink tubing), sort of re-creating the original connector. It will plug into the corresponding plug from the CDI Box. It will be the end from the box that has the little light brown wire right next to it. The Light brown single wire from the Stator plugs into the light brown single wire from the CDI.

You will need to mount the CDI box in a secure spot out of the way, taking care not to route any wired next to the exhaust. I built a custom carrier under the seat which also holds the gel battery.




More details in a minute.

So now we are moving to the other wire coming out of the CDI Box. It also has a rubber three wire connector. You can either remove it completely if you don't care about resale, or you can carefully pull the wires through the connector leaving it on the wire, but giving you an orange female wire, a black male wire and a black/white male wire. The orange female wire needs to connect to the black wire on the new Coil. You DID replace the coil - RIGHT? The CDI coil is a different coil than the points coil. I have no idea if one of the aftermarket 6 volt coils would work, but a modern one likely would. I needed to make a short extension cable to reach the coil connector, as on the DT400, it plugs right into the harness, and it is too far forward for the wires to meet. Easy.

Now on to the other let off the stator which is the "A" leg.

The plastic plug you removed to feed through the case can either be added back, but if you do you will need to make an adapter cable which plugs into it then ends in three wire. One Yellow (lighting AC) One Green and One Green/Red. These three wires will connect to the old connections where the stator plugged in on the old harness. You can also just cut off the blade connectors and replace with the appropriate connector to plug into the bike harness.

The cool trick here is to create a "Y" connector which plugs into the yellow between the stator and the harness and that is where you can mount your regulator to keep your headlight from blowing - Highly Recommended! That is noted on the lower right of the drawing with the notation of "REG"

OK - Next post will finish things up.

So after setting the timing on the bike (I used the DT1 timing setting) check for spark with the plug out. Also make sure you get spark with the key on, but no spark with the key off. That will assure you wired it right.

Then, go ahead and give it a kick. Mine started up on the second kick - mainly had to get some more gas in the carb - and almost immediately idled. It now starts easier and seems to run a lot smoother. Plus no adjustments, and no worries about deep water crossings

All in all this should be a really great upgrade on the bike. I rode around the neighborhood, and discovered a few other mechanical issues, but the ignition works flawlessly and runs smoothly. Success!