Topic: Points plate at end of adjustment

[BenelliSEI]

Congrats on finding your bike problem. Much appreciated all the great learnings here! My K1 has always been a bit of a compromise when setting timing. I’ll be checking the shaft this winter!

[HondaMan]

A dial indicator showed .020 runout on the advance shaft. Many thanks to Hondaman, Pe We, and 754. I'll post results when I get it taken care of. Any reason other than cost to replace the shaft rather than straighten?

I've had quite some trouble with the 'new' ones leaking oil. The O-ring on it is a custom size, and the shafts I got had the wrong size on them. The oil inside the end of the shaft is at full pressure, 60 PSI, so it leaks quite a bit!

They straighten easily. Just don't turn the big nut CCW direction, especially with plugs in the engine.

[PeWe]

Electronic ignition is not that sensitive in this matter as points that will open/close differently due to bent stud.

I'll check my K2's shaft just for sure for eventual minor error. Its stud has been corrected before.

My K6 got a new stud a few years ago, replacement crank did not have one.
I lubricated the o-ring and used loctite on the threads which I did not want to interfere with eachother.

[HondaMan]

Electronic ignition is not that sensitive in this matter as points that will open/close differently due to bent stud.

I'll check my K2's shaft just for sure for eventual minor error. Its stud has been corrected before.

My K6 got a new stud a few years ago, replacement crank did not have one.
I lubricated the o-ring and used loctite on the threads which I did not want to interfere with eachother.

About 3 years ago i rebuilt a K0 engine with a very old (but still operating!) Dyna S - the one with the circuit-board baseplate - and when I fired up the engine I could not even get the timing close, no matter how I set them. Sure enough, I checked the shaft and it was a whopping 0.065"+ bent! After I straightened it the timing settled in again.

[754]

To anseer tge question. . I have had ones very difficukt to remove..
 Far safer to straighten  it , than to break it off.l

[PeWe]

0.065" (1.65mm) will be visible. I had much smaller wobble in my mind.

This proove that the stud is a very important thing to verify to be correct before setting the ignition.

Again a thread that ends up in very useful information!

[JLeather]

I am having similar issues with my K1. I can get the 1-4 gap and timing perfect but 2-3 would be out of range and can't hit the timing F mark. I was playing with moving the timing plate(s) around but then Thanksgiving and Christmas busy time interrupted the fiddling. I guess I will have to start over fresh and see which movement directions affects which timing adjustments.

I'm having the same problem with my '77 CB550 right now.  It's never been a good cold-starter and I decided to go through a full tune-up this winter.  Found the timing was way off.  I have to rotate the points plate almost all the way CCW to get 1-4 advanced enough, and then I do not have enough adjustment on 2-3 to get it in spec (remains too advanced).  I haven't checked to see which points I have per HondaMan's post above.  Will check the advancer stud for straightness and try this advancer trick if the springs seem loose.

[HondaMan]

I am having similar issues with my K1. I can get the 1-4 gap and timing perfect but 2-3 would be out of range and can't hit the timing F mark. I was playing with moving the timing plate(s) around but then Thanksgiving and Christmas busy time interrupted the fiddling. I guess I will have to start over fresh and see which movement directions affects which timing adjustments.

I'm having the same problem with my '77 CB550 right now.  It's never been a good cold-starter and I decided to go through a full tune-up this winter.  Found the timing was way off.  I have to rotate the points plate almost all the way CCW to get 1-4 advanced enough, and then I do not have enough adjustment on 2-3 to get it in spec (remains too advanced).  I haven't checked to see which points I have per HondaMan's post above.  Will check the advancer stud for straightness and try this advancer trick if the springs seem loose.

The 550 does not have this shaft: it is held together with a bolt instead.
The mis-timing problem you describe sounds a LOT like Daiichi points on a TEC baseplate. I did a post long ago about how to make them work, it goes something like this, with the points off the baseplate:

The non-moving ground arm must be bent upward toward the moving arm (the geometry of the Daiichi baseplate is simply wrong). To get there, I bend the ground arm upward, then clamp some ViseGrips on the baseplate as my "grip" and bend the ground arm back out again, parallel with the moving contact. This causes the ground contact to move inward, toward the backing plate, and upward toward the moving contact, but it still leaves more than enough contact area to run the coils. I ran my 750 this way for 4 months and then put my first tester Transistor Ignition on it like that, and ran it 6 more years (it might have been 7) before I found a TEC baseplate assembly from South sound Honda. It dropped straight in, instead of all the fiddling.

In the end, it came out as 0.014" gap on the 1-4 points and 0.012" gap on the 2-3 side when I got the timing right. With the Transistor Ignition this small gap on the 2-3 side doesn't matter as much as if just running the stock Kettering setup, because they don't arc now.

[JLeather]

Thanks HondaMan.  Sounds like a lot of aggravation.  I've got a DynaS I'm probably going to throw on it if I can't get the points to behave.  It was slated for my 750, but the 550 seems to want it more

[HondaMan]

Thanks HondaMan.  Sounds like a lot of aggravation.  I've got a DynaS I'm probably going to throw on it if I can't get the points to behave.  It was slated for my 750, but the 550 seems to want it more

The 550 will not be able to support the Dyna S. It uses 1.5 amps exta power from the bike, and the 550 only has that much extra to begin with. The result is always a low-to-dead battery, bikes dies in city traffic from low spark problems, stuff like that. Heck, the 750 struggles to run those things!

Do you have one of my Transistor Ignitions, which were designed expressly for these bikes? With this gizmo you can bend the ground arm of Daiichi points upward toward the moving ones, then recover the adjustment angle on the baseplate. That's how I first tested this this back in 2006, for 6 years, on my 750: I installed daiichi points, simply bent the ground arm upward until I could get the timing marks where they belonged (almost), then ran it with the contacts not-flat to each other for over 5 years. It ran fine.

[JLeather]

The 550 will not be able to support the Dyna S. It uses 1.5 amps exta power from the bike, and the 550 only has that much extra to begin with. The result is always a low-to-dead battery, bikes dies in city traffic from low spark problems, stuff like that. Heck, the 750 struggles to run those things!

Do you have one of my Transistor Ignitions, which were designed expressly for these bikes? With this gizmo you can bend the ground arm of Daiichi points upward toward the moving ones, then recover the adjustment angle on the baseplate. That's how I first tested this this back in 2006, for 6 years, on my 750: I installed daiichi points, simply bent the ground arm upward until I could get the timing marks where they belonged (almost), then ran it with the contacts not-flat to each other for over 5 years. It ran fine.

HondaMan, I've not yet had the pleasure of running one of your ignitions.  I bought a very early model, but it went out the door on an unfinished project.  As for my 550  have checked and it appears to be all TEC parts on the plate so some more investigation is necessary.  I suppose it's possible that one of them has worn the block out or something else strange?

[JLeather]

As a follow-up since my points plate is all TEC components I opted to fiddle with the points gaps to get the timing in spec.  I closed up the 1-4 and opened up the 2-3 a couple thou and got them both in spec at the same time (albeit barely).

[HondaMan]

As a follow-up since my points plate is all TEC components I opted to fiddle with the points gaps to get the timing in spec.  I closed up the 1-4 and opened up the 2-3 a couple thou and got them both in spec at the same time (albeit barely).

This sounds like the TEC points plates we have been getting since about 2018 or so. The ones from 2012 to 2018 were dead-on the money at 0.014" gap (and straight spark advance shafts on the 750), but the litte rubbing foot on the ones we get now is slightly taller than they used to be. Good in terms of long life, but trickier to get timed up just right. I suspect this has had a lot to do with how many Transistor Ignitions I have had to build since 2018: it has been hard to keep up  with it.(!)

[JohnK3]

An overdue follow up to this subject:  I finally stopped worrying about the differences in exhaust pipe temp and the relative strengths of the exhaust pulses and just took the bike out for a ride.  It runs very well, pulls hard, and sounds awesome.

[Deltarider]

An overdue follow up to this subject:  I finally stopped worrying about the differences in exhaust pipe temp and the relative strengths of the exhaust pulses..

Do you really manage to monitor this en route? I'd like to see a picture of that.

[MauiK3]

I had to straighten mine too.
I’m paranoid about bending it again, I pull the plugs when I do any points work.

[grcamna2]

subscribed 

[HondaMan]

I had to straighten mine too.
I’m paranoid about bending it again, I pull the plugs when I do any points work.

I do too, but also 'bump' these around using the starter. That works to get it close enough that a tug is all that is needed to finish the positioning. The main thing to remember is: NEVER pull it CCW direction, especially with the sparkplugs in. That's when they bend, and it often just takes once.

In the "old days" we used to time the Twins with 12v lamps (usually pulled out of the speedometer) on the points by pulling the cranks back & forth: it wasn't until about 1973 that Honda discovered we were bending these shafts by doing it on the 750. Then they changed their manuals to reflect use of a timing light only: I never saw them reference the old "static timing" method again after that. Most of the bikes went electronic by the 1980s, so it became moot then.

[caluser2000]

My 1977 CB500/CB550 Honda WSM shows both static and the use of a timing light. I know the bolts on the advance units on these can be snorred. I got an engine just for the internals only. The bolt was snapped clean of at the end of the crank. I had it arc eroded to remove it completely.