Or just do what this guy did:
I kid! Actually, vehicle toolkits have always been a source of fascination to me because I’m a bit like you in that I tend to carry a pretty full kit that’s rarely let me down in fixing my stuff or even the stuff of others. Figuring out the sparest toolkit possible while allowing for the widest range of possibilities has always been a challenge and will likely be something I tinker with until the end of my days.
There used to be an Intel military design of cpu you could actually buy and integrate into embedded systems - I think it was the 80960, and I vaguely remember using one in a controller for an experimental winding machine. I guess an ARM would be a lot faster but would lack the multiple dedicated counters. The ADC speed is no good unless it has the ability to DMA the results. I should have used the TI 32020 (this is long ago.) On the Mercedes 639 3 cylinder small Diesel, a torque sensor on the shaft and various other sensors are used to do all kinds of things including work out which crankshaft cycle the engine is currently in, avoiding the need for a camshaft sensor.
However, I think that is a solution in search of a problem where bikes are concerned, as with automotive electronics entirely too much effort needs to be put into overvoltage and reverse polarity protection, EMC and the like. Especially if you have unshielded cables carrying 40kV peaks, which is one reason why Toyota now do the high voltage conversion directly at the plug.
So many things can go wrong with c/b, ignition coil and spark plug systems that my own suggestion is to go back to root cause analysis. The root cause of almost all ignition defects is crappy pre-ISO 9000 designed and manufactured electrics. The answer is to replace them with modern stuff using plastics which don’t carbonise and track HV, Hall sensors which aren’t expected to switch mechanically up to several thousand cycles a minute, high temperature rubbers which allow the spark plug cap to seal onto the plug and keep out moisture, and copper alloys which retain springiness to make reliable push contacts.
Some years ago I was asked to look into putting a monitoring system into a shop floor full of machinery which kept breaking down. As part of the study for the monitoring system we looked at the common failure modes. It turned out that, in homage to Pareto, 80% of the failures were due to a single design fault - which the maintenance department was aware of but which was providing them with a lot of paid overtime.
So instead of the electronics section implementing a monitoring system, we got in a consulting engineer who fixed the design fault - and for half the cost of the monitoring system we eliminated 80% of the downtime. I know it’s anecdotal, but everybody except the maintenance technicians was happy and I got a raise.
Slightly OT but I remembered this while out walking the dog just now.
I was at a conference in Germany too many years ago, and I was taking two German and a British fellow conferees to dinner. At this time I had a German Ford, and one of the Germans asked if it was in fact made in Koln, to which I replied yes.
My British colleague then asked the German if he had a BMW or a Merc.
“Neither”, says the German, “I have an Opel”.
“Ah”, I say, “I used to have a BMW but it kept going wrong.”
“Yes,” says the German. “Ford, Opel, they understand quality and designing out failure. Daimler, BMW, they just have lots of technicians to fix things when they go wrong.”
well, i mean… it is a motorcycle. you could have just turned it around so the side you wanted to work on wasn’t facing traffic.
Clearly you’ve never been stuck on a narrow shoulder before. That idea would have been pure death.
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