A couple days' progress now. Yesterday I assembled the plug wires. Starting with these pieces and some metal core wire:
I think this is the Belden part number if you're ever at NAPA and the Gen Z counter help asks, "What's the VIN for that?":
There's a guy at my local NAPA who will actually look in the big parts books for stuff. He's about my age........ He'll factor into this post in a bit.
A little hot molten metal magic:
And we get Left Upper:
All installed:
Moving forward to today, I'd installed the aux lights a while ago and tested them on the incomplete bike and all seemed well. Then a little bit ago I set the static ignition timing while the jugs were still off, and when I was done the aux lights were flickering on and off. Even with the key off. Now indeed, the aux light install was in fact the last thing I dicked with and I checked my work all over to see if I'd put a short in the signal to the relay but everything seemed good. I figured $20 for a relay would be an OK test, so I found my guy over to NAPA and asked him if he was up for an adventure. He was! He came close enough--here are the schematics for the new relay on the left and the old one on the right:
The new relay is an 'either/or' switch and the old one is a 'both' switch. So I doubled up the park lights and the headlight on the relay. This won't be a problem because I don't have a park light position on the ignition key. If I did, the park lights would backfeed the headlight so you'd get headlight on when you only wanted park lights. Like so:
Once that was sorted, it was time to get the induction and exhaust back on the bike. Nothing special to share, except for the crossover pipe. When I first diddled with the exhaust, one ear broke off on each side of the crossover, like this:
I ended up leaving the headpipes on anyway and the crossover was rusted enough to the headpipes that the lack of clamping wasn't a problem. But this time the headers were off and the crossover was now not rusted to the headpipes. So I cut off the remaining ear and ground it smooth:
It's back together with hose clamps. Functional! Not pretty, though.
Feeling good about all that, I put the tank back on, hooked the battery back up, filled the floats and set the choke, and I got this:
https://youtu.be/R1beO-cWWJA
Something is exciting the electronic tach and cutting power to the starter. Not sure what at this point. I disconnected the power wire to the coil and got the motor to turn over, but only once. I also disconnected the signal wire to the tach and it persisted in its excitement. It's presently set up with a Dyna single fire ignition that I've used for 9 years and more than 30K miles on Ernst. By single fire ignition, I mean there is no wasted spark. The coils are 12V, wired in parallel, one for each side. On Ernst I'd used VW 12V coils that were a precise fit in the BMW coil brackets. Edgar has, as you see in the pix above, genuine Dyna dual output coils wired similarly but with the addition of the Dyna tach adaptor to send a signal to the tach. I would appreciate any input!