TOPIC:

The instructions reccomend 2-5 wraps, so I stopped at 5, and held it tight with some electrical tape.
I might try wrapping 15-20 times just to see if that works.

I ordered model # 2852, but got model 2853, which is the same, except it also has a separate hazard light indicator, which I left disconnected..I may find a use for it someday. That said, yep, 2852 or 2853 has all the idiot lights, although I'm unsure of how well the fuel indicator works..its a gauge that shows up on the bottom right corner of the LCD screen, and when the low fuel light would have come on, it only shows one bar, when its full, it shows about 5. Oil pressure warning, left and right turn signal, neutral, and high beam. I clipped the ends off my stock tach wiring and the center piece with the other lights in it, and soldered the included harnesses to the appropriate wiring, so it plugs into the stock connectors in the headlight bucket.

Got tired of doing some house cleaning, so I went out and tried wrapping the wire around the #3 plug wire about 15 times..little or no improvement, so I dug out some 22ga solid wire and wrapped that around 10-20 times (its black and was dark out, couldn't really count the wraps), and its significantly more stable now, only varying about 200 rpm either way, so I think tomorrow I'll wrap about 20-25 wraps around it and see if thats better..These plug wires seem to be original with cylinder number stickers on them, as well as heavy rubber heat shields/protectors, so I'm sure that accounts for some of the weak signal..

Btw, sorry to hijack your thread, I just noticed I have more posts on it than you do by quite a bit

Werewolfx, the stock electronic ignition is prone to false triggers. That is when the 1 and 4 cylinders fire at the same time as the 2 and 3 cylinders and vice versa. The spark from the false triggers is usually too weak to cause a backfire so it's usually not noticeable to the rider, but will produce a signal through the spark plug wire. The tach may pick it up and think the idle is jumping from 1200 to 2400 due to the extra sparks.

You can verify it with a timing light. You point the timing light at the rotor/pickup assembly. The light should only show the rotor pointed at one pickup. If you see a ghost image at the other pickup, that means you are getting the false triggers.

The remedy is to loosen up the screws for the pickup and inscrease the gap at the rotor tip very slightly.

Wrapping more and more turns around the spark wire increases the inductance of the tach sensor and may eventually filter out the weaker false-triggers.

Just curious... when you wrap the wire around the spark wire, what happens to the open end of the wire? Or do both ends go to the tach?

That makes sense, thanks Lou. I still need to dissassemble and clean the advancer anyway, when I get around to buying a timing light I'll work on making the tach a bit more stable..I don't really look at the tach much when I have a functional speedometer anyway, I shift by sound.

The open end is just taped down with the rest of the coils of wire.

At about 30 turns of wire, its actually less stable than at about 15-20 turns, but that could be interference from somthing else from getting closer to other wires under the tank.