Making a Cruse Control.

[Bob Kelly III]

Hi all...
sense I decided to make a Cruse control/throttle lock I figured I might as well document it so others could get the idea on how to make one .
let me stress that this is not the only way to make a throttle lock/cruse control....
I think Most Honda's have the adjustments already in the throttle control / switch housing and simply need a knob so you can adjust it on the fly.
.....
However My 82' XS650 has just a hole in the throttle housing and I didn't feel like making a threaded base for an adjustment screw with a knob on it, so I went with this strange arrangement.
years ago you could buy these type throttle locks at the bike shops all over the place but many of them were quite expensive....
so I decided to make my own..... like this.....
.......
I scrounged through my scrap metal pile and found a 3/16" plate of aluminum from one of my Gyrocopter builds ages ago..... I drew a rough design of what I wanted it to look like on the metal and cut it out.....
....

....

i drilled the holes and then put 2 nails through the holes to temporarly assemble it. and get an idea on how it funtions...

and after mutable fittings on the throttle itself......


I then cut the nails and riveted the ends of the nails over so they couldn't fall out of the holes.

the 2 holes in thefront bracket are for pins to keep the thing from rotating when clamped down on the throttle.... turns out I only needed one.... made from a nail and riveted into the tight hole.
i then had to file down the pin a long way as my riviting made the pin swell quite a bit and it wouldn't fit into the hole I had drilled into the throttle bracket/switch housing..... but once it fit ok it was on to the next step. .... fitting....

with the unit unable to rotate I now needed a way to adjust the squeeze on the throttle...
sense the aluminum was too thin to drill through in the direction I needed to go through , I took my torch and heated the ends of the metal so I could easily twist the ends to a flat orientation in the direction needed.....

this will also give a bit more clearance away from the throttle hand so as not to be bumped.
now it was just drill a hole for a bolt to go through.....

and that's the completed unit so far..... I plan to add a knob to the bolt and attach the nut on the back of the bolt to the aluminum and then drill a tiny hole so I can put a safty wire through the bolt so the knob will not vibrate out when loose.....

this Whole idea is so you can take your hand off the throttle without the throttle snapping closed
which is necessary for people with carpal tunnel syndrome...or hands that go numb after a while on a bike ! being able to flex your throttle hand is a must for me as my hands go numb fairly fast when gripping the throttle.
I tightened the small bolt and nut at the bottom of the "Cruse control/throttle lock" and got it to hold the throttle in any position I wanted.... however I do want it where I can back it off if I want to
or snug it up while going down the road.... that's where the Knob will come in handy...
but for today that is all I have !
enjoy....
Bob............

 

[xjwmx]

3/16" plate of aluminum from one of my Gyrocopter builds ages ago..... I drew a rough design of what I wanted it to look like on the metal and cut it out.....pictures to follow.

Forget it. Let's hear about the gyrocopters instead!

 

[Bob Kelly III]

LOL I guess I could on another thread but it's boring stuff ! only Gyro Nuts would get excited about it ! LOL
I had a Ultralight Bumble bee I bought in a Pile , completely disassembled with destroyed rotor blades I had it ready to try out in a month !
it had a Rotex 447 with a 2.81 gear reduction and I bought a warp-drive prop for it.... I only flew it about 1' off the ground in all the time I played with it, teaching myself how to fly it..... crashed it once and rebuilt it 3 times ! trying different things out....
but that's about it in a nut shell ! LOL.... I'm currently building a Helicopter out of it ! LOL.....
Bob......

 

[Bob Kelly III]

LOL ! well I see there's not allot of interest in a cruse control ....
oh well someone might be able to use the info. <GRIN>
Bob...........

 

[xjwmx]

If it's what you need then more power to you for doing it.
I have accidentally made a cruise control a few times by tightening the twist grip too far up; the twist grip tends to stay where you put it then.

Now about those gyrocopters. Hachachachacha!

 

[azman857]

Hold on there Bob......I'm in....Can you give a closer look ? Maybe I missed it, but how do you tighten it up to hold speed?

 

[Bob Kelly III]

Azman857: well I was going to make a small bracket to attach the aluminum clamp to the throttle housing but instead I took the easy way out by just putting a short pin in the clamp that stuck out toward the throttle housing.... then all I needed was a small hole for the pin to slide into.... the rubber of the throttle grip presses the clamp in so it won't come out of the pin slot and it holds very nicely.
the tightining up right now is a pain I have to get the screwdriver and wrench on the back nut and tighten the bottom bolt a tad.... but I plan to add a knob to it so I can do it on the fly while riding ...just reach down and give it a twist or two and it will be snug enough to hold it.
......
does that answer your question ?
....
Bob........

 

[Bob Kelly III]

if you look close at the last picture before I put it on ...with the clamp sitting on the seat.... you can see the tiny pin that is only about 1/8" ~3/16" long sticking up out of the aluminum on the lower side of the thing....( that's not a hole it's a pin sticking out of a hole!)
that is what keeps the clamp from turning... that one small pin. it also makes it easy on and easy off.
I can't give ya a bigger picture at the moment , sorry I'll have to play with paint and see if I can magnify it ! LOL
I think the bolt I used is a 10-32 about 1" long I may just weld a big nut on the end of it ! and give it that "Ranch Look" LOL
I will need to J.B.Weld the Nut to the aluminum bracket on the front side of the bike and then drill a very small hole in the bolt for safety wire so the bolt won't vibrate out and be lost....or find a nilock nut that size ! <grin>
a washer or two on the Knob side will help to adjust the clamp without being bound by the clamp arm it goes through.
....
there are many ways you could go with the clamping bolt,.... a lever would probably be the best so once you set the tension all you would have to do is just push the lever down and it would hold the throttle, a lever like they used to have on thermos bottles where you could adjust the seal by turning the cammed lever and then press the lever down so it rides up on the cam to clamp it down with alot more pressure....
... a knob as previously mentioned , or just leave the bolt in there and leave the throttle where it lightly holds the throttle .... however this is likely to ware the plastic and may wind up wearing the throttle grip off completely in a few thousand miles and leave you with no throttle to turn ! ( i have little faith in plastic ! )
or you could just Glue the bolt in from the front side and put a wing nut on it so all you have to do is give it a twist to tighten it.

so I think a Loose setting till you need it then either flip the lever with a cam on it's back to hold it or give the knob/wing nut what ever, a few turns to tighten it up ...
......
Bob.......

 

[azman857]

Thanks for the info....much food for thought.....Now about that gyrocopter....LOL

 

[weaselbeak]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/YAMAHA-CRUI...ash=item5d41e7ff32:g:b1UAAOxyhSBR8fQc&vxp=mtr

Been using these for years.

 

[fredintoon]

Hi Bob,
my car has cruise control but your homebuilt gadget is a throttle lock which is an entirely different thing.
Dunno about these days because I left 'ome in 1969 but back then in the UK all bikes had adjustable friction dampers built into their twistgrips.
Which was before bikes came with turn signals and as the UK drives on the left; right turn hand signals meant letting go of the twistgrip.
And having the throttle snap closed in a highway-speed turn across traffic could spoil your entire day.

 

[Bob Kelly III]

LOL ! ok..... I got the Gyro about 20 years ago now I guess, and it was a mess just pieces of square tubing and an engine, no prop and the rotors were busted in big pieces.... he did have the manual for it... that is what sold me on it... I bought it for $200 bucks, actually My Dad bought it for me and i was going to pay him back but he said merry christmas ! LOL
for about a year before that I had been studying up on gyrocopters and had a real good idea on what it took to make them work
so soon as I got it home I was hot to trott and assembled it the next day I needed a tail section (which I figured I'ed make, Rotor blades
and a prop.... that Prop I got for it was more expensive than the Gyro at $500 bucks but it was a ground adjustable warp-drive of 5ft in diameter.... just exactly what i needed ! it had a pre rotator on it, a funky but workable belt drive power take off from the prop hub
so I concentrated on repairing the rotor blades after pricing new rotor blades... they are outrageous in price ! over $2000 for the cheap ones !to my Luck they were foam filled fiberglass blades with a aluminum extruded leading edge... so I simply fiberglassed them back together and then balanced them very VERY carefully.... that balancing process took about 2 weeks to get it perfect ! and they have to be perfect!...not just close ! I made some tail feathers for the gyro out of 1/4" or 3/8" plywood and made the Horizontal stabilizer extra large
as well as the rudder..... sense I had the owners manual/book for it I could set it up just exactly as it said it should be....
I got on the net and joined the Rotary wing forum... that was a mistake looking back at it .... I should have just continued as I was I would have been better off... but I did meet Paul Brutie an Australian "Gyro GOD" that I cannot say enough good things about him ! he helped me check and double check my work and when I told them I was planning of self teaching myself to fly all hell broke loose !
But Paul and I continued to chat and he gave me some real good info....
there is only one Gyro instructor on the west coast at the time and he was based in Portland Or. about 650 miles away and it would cost close to $5000 for the instructions on how to fly it....
I have passed several how to fly conventional aircraft home study courses over the years , as I have always wanted to fly.
however a Gyro is a totally different animal ...
anyway about a month after I bought the thing I took it out to try it out a bit.... i wasn't planning on flying around but I hoped to get it off the ground a few feet anyway..... My Dad and I took it on my little trailer to a remote dirt field and unloaded it and fired it up and I taxied around for a long time getting the feel of the top heavy thing.... it did NOT steer worth a darn with the stock wheel setup
but I did manage to get it about 1ft off the ground before running out of room on the dirt field
so it was a success.... that was in the fall and winter was soon upon us and I decided to make a tail dragger out of it to help reduce the top heavy and tip over ability of it... that was a bad idea.... as it was even harder to steer than it was before....but it did work to a certain extent it was much less apt to flop over to the front left or front right....
by the time summer came back we had permission to use the closed down paved airport in Shingletown and the padlock combination !
LOL which was very hard to get !
by this time my dad purchased a B1RD and I had helped him make a trailer and setup so he didn't have to disassemble it every time to haul it around on the trailer. so we both went out 2 or 3 times a week and tried taxiing around and learning to steer with your feet....
which is one of those things that is Not as easy as it sounds !....
especially when the controls are very touchy !
My Dad got frustrated at not being able to steer the B1RD with his feet and gave up... i continued on...
the following year I converted the gyro back into a trike landing gear and at the same time I decided to make it a CLT gyro instead of a HTL gyro.... A CLT gyro is Center line Thrust...and are much safer than HTL gyros ( HTL means High thrust line.)
by the time I had the conversion done to what used to be the Bumble bee it was a one of a Kind CLT machine that only had parts of a bumble bee left on it ! LOL about half way through the summer Dad and I went to the airport and I had been doing Hops getting the feel of the machine.... but it just didn't want to take off and fly due to the high altitude... and my ground speed was getting close to 40~45mph ! normally only 15 to 20mph is the most needed....
well I added a bit of weight and it was high altitude and that makes it a faster take off speed.....
out of frustration I jammed the throttle to full and when the gyro lifted off the ground it made an immediate roll to the left and came crashing down, the rotors exploding like hand grenades as they struck the earth and when I came to a rest my gyro was still in one piece except the rotors and a few minor parts.... and of course the precious Prop !
my campaign to make the Gyro stronger, and not a "Flying lawn chair" were successful and I walked away with only a cut on my for arm
.....
the cause I discovered later was an OVERSITE on my behalf of the adjustment of the control rods to the rotor head
one was supposed to be an inch shorter than the other.... they were both exactly the same. OOOPS !
so I built new Rotors and a new prop and set out to do it all over again.... but fate intervened and My Mother died and we had to move back to the Ranch... so I decided to make a helicopter out of it so I didn't have to go 45mph to get off the ground ! LOL
it has been through 2 renovations as a Helo..so far but this time I think it will fly ! can't wait to have enough money to buy the needed parts ! ...and of course make new rotor blades as my big beautiful blades burned up in the house fire at the ranch !
so I have been set back a bit ! LOL....
but I haven't given up on the idea of Flight !
and some day I will Fly !
.....
Bob.........

 

[Bob Kelly III]

hay Fred ! Yes All but 2 Bikes I have had in the past had a friction adjustment in the throttle housing so you could adjust up the tension
and that would act as a throttle lock as well..... yes throttle LOCK is a better description than cruse control by far.... but many have called the throttle locks you could buy off the shelf ...Cruse controls.... so when in Rome ...... LOL
you can tell real quick when your using the Cruse control/throttle lock that it is definitely not a cruse control like in a car ...all you have to do is go down hill ! you'll speed up real fast !
its far easier to turn the friction damper into a throttle lock than to make this thing.... all you need do is add a knob to the adjustment
screw or replace the screw with a longer bolt and go with that !
i did that on 2 of my bikes the Honda 700 shadow and the 1100 shadow both had throttle locks !
the one on the 700 was just a long bolt about 2" long with a bunch of nuts on it for a knob ! LOL it worked great !
I did drill through the bolt near the tip to put a wire through the bolt so it wouldn't vibrate out when loose though.
.... my hands have been going numb for decades now and sense there is no cure besides an operation the next best thing is being able to take your hand off the throttle and flex it a bunch of times to get the blood circulating again !
....
Bob.........

 

[Bob Kelly III]

Fred does your bike have a friction adjustment for the throttle ? my 82' only had a hole in it.... like they didn't bother to tap it and add the 3 cent parts ! LOL
.....
Bob........

 

[fredintoon]

Fred does your bike have a friction adjustment for the throttle ? my 82' only had a hole in it.... like they didn't bother to tap it and add the 3 cent parts ! LOL
.....Bob........

Hi Bob,
even though I bought my 1984.XS650 NOS in1986 and replaced it's throttle cable at least three times over the years I've never even noticed if its twistgrip had the start of a friction adjusting screw or not.
So I just looked and no it ain't, not even a hole to be tapped. Nor does the twistgrip on my 1980 XS11SG. But your 1982 does? Weird, innit?
As you need to let go the twistgrip now and then to de-numb your hands your throttle friction gadget is necessary so you don't lose power
in traffic.
I've seen big ol' foam rubber bar grips in catalogs, you reckon a set would help you?

 

[Bob Kelly III]

I tried Fat somewhat hard grips years ago ... didn't work worth a darn seems the smaller the better wearing gloves makes it worse,
vibration increases it obviously, as does hard riding where you really haing on tight.... just too many years holding tools have taken their toll i guess..... I could try a layer of 1" soft foam wrapped around them I suppose might help I dunno....
....
Yah I find it curious that Yamaha didn't add the friction adjustment to the XS650's kind'a strange ...but drilling a hole and tapping it shouldn't be too hard.... the problem is that is really thin soft metal !
......
Bob......

 

[Bob Kelly III]

yah My 82' has the hole drilled but not tapped i figured it was a left over design that they didn't implement....
but sense the earlier ones didn't even have the hole .... maybe they were going to put it in but didn't ... that's weird !
I think a throttle that closes slowly is much better than the snap shut ones for street use anyway.... I like my dirt bikes to snap shut
but many a time I've been riding down the road and had a bee get in my helmet or feel something crawling on my neck and you want to be able to use both hands if the need arises !
I remember taking both hands off my handle bars one time just for that purpose and the front wheel started shimming real bad.... put my hands back on the bars and it stopped.... i checked the wheel alignment and it was way off so I corrected it and took it for another ride
and it still did it.... I never did figure what it was that caused it... perhaps the front wheel was out of balance I dunno but that bike I knew not to take both hands off the handle bars ! only one that ever did that ...
....
Bob.......

 

[fredintoon]

Hi Bob,
the "usual suspect" for front wheel shimmy is loose steering head races.
First be sure the head races are lubed nice then usually a 1/4-turn tighter is enough to fix it.
And as I learned the hard way; another full turn when you put a sidecar on the bike.

 

[Bob Kelly III]

Kool thanks Fred !
.....
Bob.....

 

[YamadudeXS650C]

if you look close at the last picture before I put it on ...with the clamp sitting on the seat.... you can see the tiny pin that is only about 1/8" ~3/16" long sticking up out of the aluminum on the lower side of the thing....( that's not a hole it's a pin sticking out of a hole!)
that is what keeps the clamp from turning... that one small pin. it also makes it easy on and easy off.
I can't give ya a bigger picture at the moment , sorry I'll have to play with paint and see if I can magnify it ! LOL
I think the bolt I used is a 10-32 about 1" long I may just weld a big nut on the end of it ! and give it that "Ranch Look" LOL
I will need to J.B.Weld the Nut to the aluminum bracket on the front side of the bike and then drill a very small hole in the bolt for safety wire so the bolt won't vibrate out and be lost....or find a nilock nut that size ! <grin>
a washer or two on the Knob side will help to adjust the clamp without being bound by the clamp arm it goes through.
....
there are many ways you could go with the clamping bolt,.... a lever would probably be the best so once you set the tension all you would have to do is just push the lever down and it would hold the throttle, a lever like they used to have on thermos bottles where you could adjust the seal by turning the cammed lever and then press the lever down so it rides up on the cam to clamp it down with alot more pressure....
... a knob as previously mentioned , or just leave the bolt in there and leave the throttle where it lightly holds the throttle .... however this is likely to ware the plastic and may wind up wearing the throttle grip off completely in a few thousand miles and leave you with no throttle to turn ! ( i have little faith in plastic ! )
or you could just Glue the bolt in from the front side and put a wing nut on it so all you have to do is give it a twist to tighten it.

so I think a Loose setting till you need it then either flip the lever with a cam on it's back to hold it or give the knob/wing nut what ever, a few turns to tighten it up ...
......
Bob.......

Interesting construction, Bob. Thanks for sharing.
I have for years had the same issue with hand going numb quickly. I found that a throttle control helps, as does foam grips:

http://www.motosport.com/product/?a...ww.google.com%2F&pssource=true&segment=badger

...As well as releasing some of the tension from the throttle return spring. This was like doing brain surgery on my FJR1300, a two hour job using fine tools and digging down rather deep into the throttle body area.

I also use cramp busters like many others do, as well as a Go-Cruise, which works well for me.

https://www.amazon.com/CRUISE-2whee...=1-1&keywords=motorcycle+cruise+throttle+lock