As you know, I have had my Rostra electronic cruise control on my bike for the last two seasons. The cruise control works great when it is engaged, but can be a pain in the butt sometimes to get it to engage quickly. It sometimes engaged after 5 seconds and other times almost right away. It got to be pretty annoying when riding with my wife, who has electronic cruise on her Spyder. My bike would drop almost 10 kph before it would engage, prompting my wife to disengage her cruise. It got to be such an annoyance that I stopped using it most of the time.
I figured that something was not right. Bill had me try his settings, but I found that my bike was surging.
I put the settings back to what I had and left it.......That was until two weekends ago.
I took the bike apart to get to the throttle body. I took the throttle body off and checked out a few things.
To give you an overview, I used the cruise mechanism from a 2007 Goldwing. The mechanism stays put while the throttle is turned. When I engage the cruise control, the cruise mechanism turns to match the position of the throttle. It was the time it takes the cruise mechanism to match up with the throttle is why it took so long for the cruise to engage.
I decided to see what would happen if I had the cruise mechanism turn at the same time as the throttle. This would force the cruise cable back into the cruise module.
There is a nub that sticks out from the throttle mechanism that is used to stop the cruise mechanism. I drilled a hole directly across from it in the cruise mechanism and put in a pocket head bolt for the nub to sit in. I put a lock nut on the other side to fasten it. The cruise and throttle mechanism now turn as one.
The other issue I then had was that when I turned the throttle, the cruise cable wasn't being pushed back into the cruise module because of the round end on the end of the cruise cable. I then decided to take a piece of heavy aluminum wire and flattened it, so that it would fit in the grove where the cruise cable sits. I made it a little oversized, so that it fit real snug. I then drilled a couple of holes in the cruise mechanism to put tie straps to hold the wire, just in case. I am not worried about the tie straps melting. There wouldn't be enough heat to do so. I know this because my other tie straps I put there a couple of years ago are still intact.
I put everything back together and waited for a nice day to try it. I got my chance last Friday. I took off early from work, since it was Friday, it was sunny and decently warm for this time of year (8C).
The cruise worked perfect. It now engages right away and it only drops 2 kph before it reaccelerates back to my original speed. I tried it 6 times at various speeds from 60 kph (40 mph) up to 110 kph (70 mph) without fail.
Now, I am a happy camper.
