I’ve
been wanting and waiting to get my ratty old Hitachi CB points changed
ever since I got my Feb. ’85 RD 350 back on the road after a yearlong
tight-budget restoration. Due to my “studies” and work abroad, then
after my return home, the retirement of my mechanic friend Satya Rao
(the only one I used to allow to work on her), she had been in dry
storage for 14 years.

Until Roopin helped me take her to
Harsha’s garage in Basavangudi for a restoration, repaint, chrome job
and new piston rings that brought compression up to a relatively healthy
132 PSI on both cylinders. I also requested the removal of the 4mm
restrictor plate riveted to the exhaust port, to bring her exhaust
duration to High Torque specs. This last item, I must say, impressively
upped the power delivery from 5K RPM onwards to a screaming 8500+ RPM
peak.

While
it was lovely to have her back better than how she was running back in
’95, the points frequently went out of tune and robbed my bike of her
glorious full-throated growl. They needed adjustment every 1000km due to
their inherent mechanical design and various moving and rubbing parts,
and needed to be manually reset to something close to a healthy state
again. And they’re not something that most mechs like to tune up,
because they’re a pain to set up anywhere beyond 80% accuracy, I feel.

With
worn-out cams, aging mechanical points and brittle wiring held together
with yards of tape, they malfunctioned 4 times in the past 9 months,
forcing me to ride her home late at night on one wheezing cylinder and
swearing at the damage being done to the crank and what not, riding in
“mono” rather than in full “stereo” mode. 

Well, I’m ecstatic to
report that my bike and my enjoyment of her have received a fantastic
boost with the RD Dreams RD 350 CDI. This past weekend all the stars had
aligned, and Saturday started with ever-helpful Mukund dropping by the
farm in his Gypsy and helping me load up the RD on it for a drive along
the NICE Rd. and thence to be unloaded at my old buddy Raymonds garage
in Koramangala 1st Block by 10am.

Though the bike was rather
dirty after her last few rides in the rain, Raymond cheerfully took
apart the RD’s wiring harness and the entire hated points assembly,
along with the headlight dome and fuel tank. Within 2 hours, the shiny
new brass and steel parts were in, and the primitive stock points and
magneto were out, lying amidst the old wiring harness, looking as crappy
as my feelings about them. 

Installation was a breeze, according
to Raymond. He noted that the Woodruff key slot was precisely machined,
and the clip neatly slotted in place without any trouble, unlike the
CDI units that he had seen so far on other RDs that he had worked on.
Those often needed some manual cutting and adjustment before they could
be coaxed on to the crank-end. It took some hours to painstakingly
splice together the new RXG Minda-made wiring harness, to the new wiring
in the headlight dome and for the rear brake/ indicator lights, so that
they could work with the Yamaha YBX switchgear assembly.

Grounding
points were carefully scraped with a razor blade to ensure reliable
earthing for the components. The RDD-supplied pair of ignition coils,
100W rectifier, the CDI black-box and the wiring from the RDD rotor
assembly did not require any splicing at all to be connected. They
easily plugged in to the wiring along the frame section, after Raymond
had ensured that the routing of wires and all connections were done as
per spec. 

Thankfully Shuvo the whiz biker/ engineer arrived just
in time to help Raymond set up the CDI to the recommended
configuration. This being a sophisticated upgrade, I was glad for his
unstinting help and impressive knowledge, working along with Ray to
bring my bike’s ignition system into the 21st century. These 2 guys even
worked through an hour-long Bangalore power cut without halting work,
with yours truly holding up an LED lantern to help them see. 

Not
long after the helpers at the garage left at 9:30pm, we fired her up to
check. Boy was I amazed at the throaty growl and clockwork precision of
the beat at idle. Idling was never this steady on the points, which
always had noticeable missing and erratic idle even after properly
setting them up. Now with the new CDI, just a blip of the throttle and
she responded with a ready roar that echoed off the garage walls and no
doubt startling the neighbours for good measure, to announce her
arrival! 

Let me try to put into words the difference in
performance. Some things are meant to be experienced to be believed, and
seat of the pants is the best indicator. If you haven’t ridden a bike
with the RDD CDI, you’re missing out very badly.

I was blown
away right from the first short ride just around the block to test the
timing. The standard ignition curve is simply brilliant, with response
right off idle that I’ve never felt before, quickly powering up into an
almost wheelie-inducing power rush going up through 2nd and 3rd. Now
this is what I call internal combustion! It was obvious to me right away
that the RDD CDI puts out a spark with so much intensity, and with such
precise timing at every RPM point, that fuel gets burned so much better
and so completely.

The tone of my engine had become, finally,
what her designers at Yamaha had envisioned decades ago. Too bad a
dynamic-timing CDI never made it to street RDs for many years until Ron
and RD Dreams came into the picture. A great loss indeed to lovers of
these bewitching beauties. 

I have lots more heart-thumping,
joy-inducing things to say about Ron’s creation, especially after the
mind-blowing ride I had this morning to Nandi Hills with Ron, Anu,
Danny, Mukund, Shuvo and several others. I never thought there was much
more to get out of the tired 18+ year old pistons on their 3rd set of
rings. But a long hard ride on the highway, screaming up the Hill and
down, has opened my mind up to what a properly designed ignition system
can do even on an old bike. Even with sub-standard fuel from the Shell
station that’s about 5km from the Hebbal flyover. Avoid that bunk if you
love your bike.

I didn’t even jet up from the standard 140-size
jets which were at the richest needle position. With the points
ignition, there was a lot of spluttering and flat-spotting up to 4k RPM.
Not so with this CDI. Power and tractability have dramatically
improved. Slopes that would have called for a downshift are now dealt
with a twist of the wrist. The growl at every speed sends waves of joy
into my brain. Even above 6k RPM, there is a sensation of irresistible
force pushing you along, with no fatigue after a long hard rip, with
moderate head temps being a major bonus to contribute to longer engine
life.

These are just my initial impressions at 4am on a Monday
morning. Hard to sleep with the excitement that the CDI has brought me.
I’m going to write a lot more once I get Uni filters and upjet. I’m sure
the silly smile on my mug is going to get even wider. This CDI is so
good that it becomes imperative to upgrade the rest of the bike in order
to enjoy the ride to the max. For those who love their RDs as I do,
this will no doubt be an exciting journey to experience awesome RD
Dreams!

Ron Chinoy, thank you for your excellent ignition system, words
can’t convey my appreciation! Major kudos to Mukund, Shuvo and Raymond,
without whose help these wonderful things wouldn’t have happened. One
is lucky to have good friends like these.

If you’re still
running old points (“Hello, this is 2010 calling!”) or a no-name static
timing CDI, I strongly urge you to save up, beg or borrow and get the
RDD RD CDI hooked up on your ride.

The only thing you’ll regret is not having installed it years ago. Life is short, my friends, make the most of it.

As always, rock hard and ride free!

Ah good to see my blog after all these months. After reading so many blogs in NetNewsWire, my favourite RSS reader, there’s little time to blog myself.

Maybe I just need to take baby steps like this little post. Like Twitter but a bit more fleshed-out, if you will.

Someone needs to be told that personalised plates are not yet available in India.

Seeing that my last post was back in Dec. 08, I can look back on the year in progress and have the luxury of being able to say I’m doing a lot better in life and in work.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

To blog. To read everything interesting that I want to. To do the things I really want to do. To be the friend I wanted to be. To keep in touch with all my friends and family. To hang out with interesting people. To make a list of things that I don’t have enough time for.

I’m going to try harder to not let time pass me by. Life’s too short, as the old saying goes…

On August the 1st, at long last, I went to a place I usually avoid like the plague- Forum Mall in Bangalore, and bought my dream machine- a sexy black Macbook! It sports a vivid 13.3″ screen, 2 GB RAM, a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and built-in everything except an SD Card reader/ PCMCIA card slot/serial port. To add icing to the cake, and because I dislike using the track pad, I went to the Reliance iStore on MG Rd. and splurged on the Apple Mighty Mouse, a wireless, Bluetooth mouse with a laser pointer that works everywhere except on glass tables. The Imagine store was out of Mighty Mice on that day. I also purchased the slick  Apple Front Row remote control for convenient access to my music, movies and photos.

I had to return my first Mighty Mouse the very next day because it would only scroll down but not up. ll the other buttons worked as advertised. The nice folks at the iStore exchanged it for another new mouse with no hassle, and even helped me test it on my Mac to ensure that it worked. To date, this defective first mouse, and the fact that both USB ports are located too close to each other, preventing 2 devices from being connected simultaneously (if one of them has an extra-wide body like my Tata Indicom Plug2Surf CDMA modem), has been my only negative experience with Mac ownership.

The sales staff at the Imagine Store at the Forum, which is not an Apple store by any means, albeit an Authorised Reseller, were very friendly and helpful. They were puzzled by my insistence, before parting with my cash,  on seeing if the keys on the keyboard could be popped up from their standard QWERTY configuration, and rearranged in my preferred DVORAK keyboard configuration for better ergonomics and less RSI. I had read on instructables.com or some such site that a Macbook could be reconfigured this way, but wanted to be 100% sure just in case the keyboard design had changed since that article was posted. Lo and behold, not only was this configuration supported by Mac OS X (as it is in Windoze and Linux), but it took barely an hour for a busy but helpful technician to prise and rearrange the keys to my favourite configuration.

A couple of days later, after being disappointed by the meager selection of laptop bags at the Imagine Store, the Witco store and at the new-to-India Staples office-supply chain, I bought myself a Samsonite backpack from the company store on Residency Rd. There are better packs available abroad, and some of the Crumpler and Targus bags were nice too, but didn’t meet my requirements for a bag that I could tote to a clients’ offices and around town in general.

Then, to ensure added protection to my prized new machine, I bought a slick black neoprene case from Case Logic, whose CD cases have impressed me over the years with their functionality and durability. Neoprene is mostly used in diving suits, and helps repel water, though I believe it is not a fully-waterproof material.

My new MacBook worked like a dream from day 1, and I revelled in the user-friendliness of its operating system, known as OS X Leopard. Sure, many things were different in Mac World after migrating from Microsoft Windows. All windows have their minimise, maximise and close buttons on the top-left, as compared to being on the top-right for Windows. After changing any settings, there’s no “Save” button, as all changes are applied on the fly. Really slick.

I downloaded Firefox 3, my favourite browser, as well as VLC Media Player, HandBrake for DVD ripping, Adium (a neat multi-protocol chat client that lets me use Gtalk and Yahoo Messenger within one application), as well as NeoOffice, the Mac version of the popular OpenOffice free office software suite. To install apps in a Mac, you don’t double-click on the .exe installer file like in Windows. The Mac equivalent is called a Disk Image File, and you just have to drag that .dmg icon to the Applications folder to install. What I like is that OS X will ask you to enter your master password for all installations and major changes to system or user settings. This way, it’s harder for any potential Mac viruses out there to install themselves and wreak havoc.

Using a computer has become a joy now, compared to the headaches inflicted on me by Windows XP for so many years!