I've decided I really want an hour meter to keep track of time for maintenance reasons. I've found one for a good price buy they say you have to use on engines that fire once per revolution. There's a note on the site page that says "Most 4-stroke ATVs fire the plug on the exhaust stroke also".

 

yep this is a wasted spark set up too, it fires on the power and the exhaust stroke.

 

I got my hour meter from the local yamaha dealer for 37.00 it has a small wire that you wrap around your plug wire and it has an internal battery works awesome i went riding for 2 days thought i had around 4 to 5 hours on it looked at the hour meter and i only have 2.7 hours on it, it should save me some money on oil changes I am gonna be running bomb synthetic

 

Yes I agree. The worst thing that's done is changing the oil without knowing how many exact miles/hours are on it PLUS you couple that with hardly anyone knowing whether the oil actually needs changing yet, is at the right time for a change, or is way past it's life and it can be bad. It can be a lose-lose situation. Either you're wasting precious resources prematurely (i.e. the oil, your time) or you're running spent contaminated stuff through your expensive mill.

I'm looking at this meter: http://www.atvworks.com/proddetail.asp?prod=TachHour but am really confused by their explanation on what it will work on quads like ours that fire on the exhaust stroke as well.

 

Our engines do fire once per revolution.... that is revolution of the crank. I think the product info should state that it works on engines that fire only once per complete cycle. Our engines are triggered off the crank, meaning the crank does 2 complete revolutions for 1 complete cycle which consist of 4 strokes!

 

come to think of it would our ds's firing every turn of the crank effect my hour meter? if anything it might make it run twice as fast if that is possible right, i can see how the tach/hourmeter would show twice as many rpm's but my hour meter should be ok right? i wonder how it works? my hourmeter

 

Jackass, you bring up a good point. I can understand the tach "counting" the sparks to calculate the rpm. But why does an hour meter care how many sparks there are. If the hour meter gets its data from the trigger wire, then if your ride at high rpms does it calculate the hours faster. I would imagine its just an on or off circuit, as long as its is receiving a spark then the circuit is on and the clock is running.

 

I found more info last night and some folks do have meter that read twice as fast. I also found out last night that most of the hour meters sold to off-roaders are designed to work right for our stuff. Additionally, I've already got an email back from atv works stating the one they list is the right one for our application.

Update. I just ordered one from tiny tach. Seems pretty cool, is a combo tach and hour meter, is only 1.5 x 3 in and can be surface or flush mounted. Will post back how it turns out.

http://www.tinytach.com/tinytach/gasoline.php#

Rich

 

let me know how it works rich maybe I will be buying a tach one too

 

I use a Sendec hour meter/tach. I think it is model 1032. It has a built-in battery and only needs a single wire attached to the spark plug wire to activate. It works great and there is no guessing about when to change the oil.

http://www.sendec.com/SenDEC+Product...r/default.aspx