Vintage Honda Tester SRH500 Kowa Seiki Ltd

[CB5501977K3]

My mate came around today to test condensers on my CB550.
He brought his 1970's Honda Motor tester with him which seemed to work and measured the capacitances at 24 micro farad and tested resistance which was slightly deficient on both caps.

I have not seen a tester like this before and thought the forum may find it of interest. It comes with a series of cards; shown is one for some test on a CB750/550.

Sorry but I can't answer any tech questions on it..........

Chris

[Trigger]

I had one of them in my old workshop, I never knew how to use it but, I know my manager used to use it. Some kind of early multi meter.

[Bryanj]

Meads had one of those as well, used it maybe fortnightly

[SteveD CB500K0]

Never seen one before. I wonder how they work.

Measuring capacitance is tricky.


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[AshimotoK0]

Nice vintage bit of kit. A lot of cheapo multi-meters now have a capacitance range on them now.

[Bryanj]

Bit i used most was the coil tester on th RH  side, i think biggest gap i got was 9mm

[CB5501977K3]

Correction re measurement - it should read 0.24 microfarads, not 24!

[AshimotoK0]

Correction re measurement - it should read 0.24 microfarads, not 24!

Ha ha .. I spotted that ..posted it should be micro-farad and then when I re-read it it said micro. so I edited it.

I wonder if the Honda tester applies a high voltage to make the capacitance measurement, which a modern multi-meter would not. The high voltage test would be better because it would test at the typical voltage generated by the back EMF produced by the ignition coil primary, when the points open.

[SteveD CB500K0]

The high voltage test would be better because it would test at the typical voltage generated by the back EMF produced by the ignition coil primary

Told you measuring capacitors was tricky

When I was a design engineer in the 80s, we used 1 Farad “capacitors” in our short term battery backup systems. They were probably small rechargeable batteries inside but they surface mounted on the pcb and were very rugged so we didn’t care …



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[MCTID]

Hi CB5501977K3 (Member who started this post) could you get your mate to describe what this bit of kit can do, and how it does it....I'm sure lots of the 'Techies' on this Forum would find it of great interest. (it would be like Chinese writing for me I'm afraid.........but as Dirty Harry used to say in that movie, 'A man's gotta know his limitations'). LOL.

[CB5501977K3]

Hi MCTID
It had several cards (I have shown one) and they give instructions or a procedure and which test leads to use to connect to which part of the bike.
I don't think he would know how it's testing it but he seemed to be pretty competent doing my caps.
I know it did ignition coils and had a dated strobe light with it for doing dynamic timing (we didn't use that).
He did tell me in the mid 70's  if your motorcycle workshop wanted to become a "Five Star" agent you had to have certain test gear and Honda tools. Perhaps this was part of the kit you needed at the time?

Chris

[Bryanj]

Yes it was part of the kit you had to have, along with vac gauges and specific model tools

[AshimotoK0]

Then they went to the Service Testers like the one in the background here with an integrated oscilloscope.
Think these were made by Sourei or some name sounding like that. Pretty sure my mate in York has one similar that he got from a closed down dealers that he wanted me to get up and running a while ago.


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[AshimotoK0]

We had that one as well. AFAIK not a single mechanic could operate it except maybe Steve the workshop foreman.

Ah ! but you could work out Honda plain bearing shell  code selection Ken .. my local 5-Star dealer in Hull didn't have a clue about that. I tried  to talk them through it to order some 400/4 shells back in the day  and I sensed it went in one ear and came out of the other.

Would have loved to have had a go on that oscilloscope based tester ... right up my street 

[K2-K6]

I like seeing some of these old setup kits,  also looking in other's workshops to see good ideas too.

It appears fairly straightforward (with those crib cards to set it up) to use and would save time in servicing to run through a few things and give the operator reasonable view of setup.

Left panel is analogue multi-metre for checking volts,  amps etc. So general fault finding,  switching and generating output.

The centre panel is,  more or less,  analogue electronic tachometer ( pulse counter/ frequency monitor with integral circuit damping to give smooth display), reference of which is made to it in the Honda manuals in carburettor idle circuit setup.  Also seems to display dwell? On the green scale.  Plus capacitor check,  this could possibly be simple resistance,  or a simulated readout from switching time interpretation efficiency / deficiency to display "in range" components.  Not necessarily measurement of capacitance,  just observation of how clean the switching is on a time basis to predict if capacitor needs replacement.
This section you could see the operator connecting to,  then just flicking through the functions to quickly assess ignition primary circuit conformity and whether it required work or not. 

Right panel looks like you'd test the coil by running it from the test machine (so taking out the bike's primary switching)  to see if worked and could produce decent sparks.  Helps diagnose by splitting the "whole bike system" to identify which bit any fault exists in.  Coil ok,  youre looking at the bike.  Coil knackered,  replace it.

It all gives a bit of "workshop theatre " too in order to charge the customer more money