Suzuki Bandit 1200 — Tacho Update!

Resistance is indeed... futile.
As the previous post eluded to, the big Bandit's tachometer is now working only by hooking into the black/yellow coil-feed wire. This is how Suzuki did it on the later Bandits, and I'm having to do this because the later model CDI unit I bought doesn't run a feed to the tachometer. 
After joining the two wires together where the looms plug into the CDI unit, I initially thought my troubles were over, until i hit the 4,000 RPM range.
But then the needle went berserk, floating all over the rev range until you dropped the engine speed to four grand again.

I put this down to interference from the coils, and wondered whether a resistor inline with the tachometer might help.

There were various performance shops around the world selling such items for race cars so, with a bit of shopping around, found that a 10,000 ohm resistor was the way forward. Worth a punt for a few cents (unless you find the guy on eBay who was trying to sell them for $16 per resistor! 😐).

I bought a pack of 25 for $5.82 😀 (you never know when you might need another).

Soooo...

I took the seat and tank off, cleaned and oiled the K&N air filter, changed the inline fuel filter and set about fitting my resistor.

About two inches from the spade terminal on the coil, i removed some insulation on the black/yellow wire so I could solder in a new wire. I soldered a couple of lengths of new wire onto each end of a resistor and covered all bare metal in heat-shrink tubing.

Next i carefully cut the insulation on the top of the wiring loom to find where the black/red tachometer feed wire was. It was sat right on the top of the loom! Result. 😎

I cut that one and stripped the end of the side that goes up to the dash. Then I soldered in both wires with the resistor in, using heat-shrink on the tacho side.

Then it was just a case of securing the wires, and covering with tape as needed. 

Quick test before I put the tank on and it now works perfectly. Whoop!

A road test confirmed we were back in the game! Tacho working properly, and something else ticked off the list. 

Shock next...