Topic: Maybe time for an ignition refresher?

[Spanner 1]

Disagree with that TT. The electronic regulators don't care about a reference voltage and are just pegged to demand 14v from the alternator regardless of rpms. I've seen it with my own eyes; idle =14v, 5,000 rpms= 14v.  That's why I said they are bad for the charging system as it was not designed to produce 14v at idle .

[HondaMan]

I know the Hall Effect sensors that are used in designs like Dyna S and Tytronics (and maybe others?) are quite voltage-level sensitive when used at maximum temperatures. That has always been the Achilles Heel of the Hall Effect devices: they change their trigger point (i.e., speaking in terms of magnetic flux, here) with increasing temperatures because the heat develops extra electron flow through the NPNP (or PNPN type, depending on which is used) junctions, just like in transistors and diodes. In other electronics I have designed over the years (using these types of Hall Effect devices) it was a struggle to get them to reach across wide temperature ranges (like, in the oilfield we had -35 degrees to +165 degrees F operating ranges, wider that that for storage/startup ranges) without changing their switching points. In real cold temperatures they become insensitive to the magnetic flux and at high temperatures they tend to not turn off well, once triggered. The latter is the typical Dyna S failures I have seen: they were in a hot engine and then were apparently hit with high voltage while switching at max current (i.e., 3-ohm coils in use) and this permanently altered their switching sensitivity. Then the triggers had to be repositioned (usually closer to the magnet) in order to switch consistently between cold//hot engine temps, and they would still tend to leak current (i.e., not turn all the way OFF when triggered by the magnet), which then caused weak spark from the coils.

It was this experience that steered me away from using them, even in the 1970s when they were new to the solid-state world, in my own designs. Sadly, optical triggers are not a whole lot better, plus these bikes tend to make them dirty in use, making these stop working! I did a design, just a month before the Dyna III came out, that used their Hall triggers to run a box that carried the power transistors, so as to lose the current in the heated-up triggers on the engine and hopefully reduce their failures and drift-with-temperature trigger points. It also contained a pair of flip-flop multivibrator circuits that returned the original dwell time to the coils, so as to reduce the excessive current draw on the bike. The 1-4 trigger would set the circuit OFF until the 2-3 trigger fired, which also reset the 1-4 OFF (much like the original mechanical system works), and vice-versa for the 2-3 side. This was all done to return the bike's power budget to normal again, while using the Dyna S triggers. It got real expensive, though, in 1970s dollars, to do this, so I never made more than 1 prototype of it all. It's still a good idea, and I have recently thought about dusting off the old design (if I can find it amongst my old college textbooks?) because today it could be made for about twice the cost of one of my present units, and it would save those who are using the Tytronics or Dyna units and can't return their spark advancers to the OEM points cam anymore.

Points are actually pretty amazing...

[RAFster122s]

Gee HondaMan, Mark, you aren’t inspiring confidence in electronic units. Biggest issue today in most electronics being engineered and used is the designs have little to no operating headroom for going beyond spec, they are built to operate at 95% or 100% of rated value and as a result you see comment and circuit failures sooner.
Friend whom was an USAF flight line mechanic and electronics specialist retired after his 20 were up and after moving back to Oregon near where they were from he and his wife bought a house a fixer upper and kids graduated high school and eldest  daughter went into electronics emgineering as she would help her dad do mods and repairs top PlayStation and Xbox and controllers. Chad still does it some….
After eldest daughter was nearly graduated he started returning to college to get his engineering degree too. Now all three kids are graduated as well as dad. Krysten works for Honeywell near Beaverton… Middle daughter is in a business field, uncertainty of her degree but she took organic chemistry which is super tough and usually a weed out chemical engineer and premed course. I hated chemistry in general at college level, prefer physics anyway anyway! Kamryn works for Disney and was in Disney in Europe for a while. Whereas Nate it’s into acting and drama and quite good at it. A creative arts degree of course….
Chad and I were talking about electronics a while back and he said they were designing things so close to the failure point eking out all they were designed to do which causes failures and the disposable electronics we have today. Then you have a ton of electronics scrap of components that fail testing and are rejected and some cheap Chinese electronics companies use eith scrapped out of spec for the original component and they adapt their designs to use these under spec ut of tolerance parts or the use parts that were harvested from recycled used equipment. So, the cheap labor of third world countries gets used to sort through or recycle electronic waste so they harvest the gold in some circuits and they sometimes do electronics waste dumping in 3rd world countries on islands in the South Pacific or/and other remote areas where populations are low and someone who may or may not own the land but dont give a rats  _____ about the environment and the potential health damages that it can cause. Just like used up ships end up beached and abandoned or towed into an area  in a ship graveyard. Salvage operations sometimes cut up these ships for scrap metal. The problem with most Chinese steel is the rusty scrap used to make it does not get sorted as they are not picky enough about what they cut up and melt down and they don’t refinance it to get those oxides out of the steel…so Chinese steel is pretty crappy material, with rust built in…

Imagine the time it will take building failures to result from that weaker rusting steel and it makes you wanna remember that…
What’s the rebar made from and where is it coming from? It is supposed to add strength to your concrete. When is the last time you saw rebar that wasn’t rusty? In your youth?

Saw a show about a GM plant that was abandoned 40 yrs ago and it showed how the earth was reclaiming the property and how water and decay were causing the structure to come apart. It was the rust of the metal in the concrete that often caused(/s) its failure. The rust expands about 10x its original size if I remember correctly…
Reminds me of some SciFy movies that have taken this concept to have planets where companies would use as dumping grounds… or a planet would get mined into oblivion to strip it of its minerals or ores to fuel expansion and building on other planets.
The writers just expand what humans do to our environment on earth. Humans consume and use things unlike most animals…
Oh well…

Pretty amazing points indeed!

[dave500]

was not designed to produce 14v at idle, which I have witnessed on a bike) Good luck.


i wouldnt say not designed but not capable with the stock regulator,ive been running a bosch electronic regulator for years on my 500 with good low rpm idle charging with no trouble at all,i ride this bike all the time.

That's why I said they are bad for the charging system as it was not designed to produce 14v at idle .

if 14 volts is bad for the system at idle how is it safe or better at higher rpm?the electrical system doesent give a #$%* about the mechanical side of things?

[HondaMan]

Gee HondaMan, Mark, you aren’t inspiring confidence in electronic units. Biggest issue today in most electronics being engineered and used is the designs have little to no operating headroom for going beyond spec, they are built to operate at 95% or 100% of rated value and as a result you see comment and circuit failures sooner.
Friend whom was an USAF flight line mechanic and electronics specialist retired after his 20 were up and after moving back to Oregon near where they were from he and his wife bought a house a fixer upper and kids graduated high school and eldest  daughter went into electronics emgineering as she would help her dad do mods and repairs top PlayStation and Xbox and controllers. Chad still does it some….
After eldest daughter was nearly graduated he started returning to college to get his engineering degree too. Now all three kids are graduated as well as dad. Krysten works for Honeywell near Beaverton… Middle daughter is in a business field, uncertainty of her degree but she took organic chemistry which is super tough and usually a weed out chemical engineer and premed course. I hated chemistry in general at college level, prefer physics anyway anyway! Kamryn works for Disney and was in Disney in Europe for a while. Whereas Nate it’s into acting and drama and quite good at it. A creative arts degree of course….
Chad and I were talking about electronics a while back and he said they were designing things so close to the failure point eking out all they were designed to do which causes failures and the disposable electronics we have today. Then you have a ton of electronics scrap of components that fail testing and are rejected and some cheap Chinese electronics companies use eith scrapped out of spec for the original component and they adapt their designs to use these under spec ut of tolerance parts or the use parts that were harvested from recycled used equipment. So, the cheap labor of third world countries gets used to sort through or recycle electronic waste so they harvest the gold in some circuits and they sometimes do electronics waste dumping in 3rd world countries on islands in the South Pacific or/and other remote areas where populations are low and someone who may or may not own the land but dont give a rats  _____ about the environment and the potential health damages that it can cause. Just like used up ships end up beached and abandoned or towed into an area  in a ship graveyard. Salvage operations sometimes cut up these ships for scrap metal. The problem with most Chinese steel is the rusty scrap used to make it does not get sorted as they are not picky enough about what they cut up and melt down and they don’t refinance it to get those oxides out of the steel…so Chinese steel is pretty crappy material, with rust built in…

Imagine the time it will take building failures to result from that weaker rusting steel and it makes you wanna remember that…
What’s the rebar made from and where is it coming from? It is supposed to add strength to your concrete. When is the last time you saw rebar that wasn’t rusty? In your youth?

I can't disagree with anything you've said here, RAF! Chinese batteries use recycled lead and are the worst on the planet...
When I was 'taught' electronics and design (for mechanical, too) we learned to FIRST evaluate the 'operational level' of the final product, then design all the "stuff" in it to meet that 'level'. For example: MIL spec equipment had to OPERATE (not just STORE) in the temperature range of (usually) -40 degrees (where degrees F and C are the same value) to 125 degrees C (257 degrees F), and the NASA equipment I was being trained to build then was even worse, with -60C and 300C being the storage range when under 'idle' power, today known as "sleep" mode, and operation was from -50C to 275C. Most silicon devices can only store at those kinds of temepratures, not operate: they simply stop working (cold) or turn into a short circuit (hot). In those days, only SOS (Silicon On Saphire) semiconductors could meet those ranges, which made for very expensive and exotic circuitry. Usually we had more 'support' circuitry than 'operational' circuitry, where ancillary circuits controlled the power applied so as to keep the operating circuits in an operable range.

Compared to that, everything else I have designed has been a piece of cake...

When I worked in the oilfield, I went from signing on as a 'bench tech', assembling/tesing their already-designed stuff, to being in charge of ALL electrical/electronic design in just 18 month's time, through no pursuit of my own. When I walked into the place I was assigned the 'stuff that doesn't work right' and told to "repair" it. Most of it needed redesign in order to work, and since no one told me NOT to do that, that's exactly what I did. Unknown to me, the field people who used the equipment suddenly wanted to know WHY it was all beginning to work after it went through my office, and the next thing I knew, I was in charge of it all and my boss was fired. So was his boss. Then the Director of Engineering came to me, after assigning me to the largest office in the building, and said simply, "Anything with wires or power in it is now your job." So, they gave me an unlimited budget and told me to fix anything electrical/electronic that didn't work right, with redesign/replacement/whatever works. The rest, as they say, is history, and if there was a place here in the forums to talk about it, I would explain how it led to the most wonderful discovery of oil and gas supplies known in history. But alas, such things are usually destined for websites about so-called conspiracy theories...

When I designed my Transistor Ignition (again) in 2009 I wanted it to last at least as long as my 750 has, without any maintenance. As such, it runs at less than 25% of its capability with OEM coils, which means its silicon parts will average 220 years' lifetime if run that long. All semiconductors erode as they run, so the longevity is purely a mathematical ratio, which is the inverse curve value of the temperature at which it is asked to operate while carrying current. The Chinese designs drive me NUTS because they run every part at 100-120% of its rated capability IF it was made properly: thus the many failures we see today. Computer equipment is the very worst, and only the Chinese products could make the Japanese versions look good by comparison: Japanese designs use the "70% rule" where all the parts in a given circuit are designed by the semiconductor builder to meet the designer's requirements at the 70%-of-total-capability level. This is why their Japanese part numbering schemes are so strange: every semiconductor is specially designed.

But, I rant...

[amitr0]

How about the vape system? https://www.vape.eu/

I'm getting quite a few inquiries where the writers are confused about how the ignitions work on these bikes. It's probably due to many new members being too young to remember/use cars with Kettering ignitions (e.g., points, condensors and coils), so here's an explanation of how these systems work, for everyone:

- Most of these bikes (the CB750/500/550/400F/350F) use conventional Kettering points, condensors, and coils type ignition.
- The CB650 bikes use a modified version of 1960s-era CDI (Capacitive Discharge Ignition) all-electronic ignition.
- These 2 systems work very differently.

The Kettering systems use points that close to pass power through the coil (which is connected to battery power) to build up a magnetic field in that coil's metal core, and at the desired moment of spark (timing) these points are bumped open by a small cam (on the spark advancer), which causes the magnetic field to collapse suddenly. This collapse causes large magnetic flux across the coil's windings, resulting in momentary high voltage at the sparkplug. The condensor, which is connected across the points, absorbs the coil's angry backlash at this event, which is about 400 volts, and stores it up for the next time the points close again. Then the cycle repeats as the condensor's power is dumped to ground when the points close, and the charging cycle starts over. A little-known, but important, feature of the condensor is: its value (0.24uF, 600v) is tuned to match the inductance of the coil, which helps peak the coil voltage during spark. This value also helps to extend the duration (time) of the spark from the coil, and helps reduce the arcing that happens when the points open to interrupt the charging current. Honda engines like these need about 4000 volts of spark to run, and the Honda coils develop about 7500 volts for about 1.2mS, plenty of extra margin there.

The [original] CDI systems of the 1960s car-era racing designs used an oscillator and transformer to develop high voltage (usually between 200v and 600v, depending on the design) from the car's 12 volt system. This power charged up a capacitor (condensor) that was dumped into the coil at the moment of timing, which created a much hotter spark of about 50,000 volts, although it is very short in duration - like 0.5mS to 0.8mS duration. These systems use upwards of 8 amps of power to make this spark (some used up to 22 amps!). For car engines this was OK. Motorycles do not make much electrical power, but Honda wanted CDI-like ignition for the CB650 engine. So, they (TOYO, actually) developed a less power-hungry CDI which leaves the coils OFF until the moment of spark, then dumps a very fast-turn-on switched current to the coil when spark is needed. Then it immediately switches back off again to save battery power. To do this, they suspend (bias) the trigger coil on the timing plate between 5 volts and 12 volts of power (for a difference of about 7 volts) and swing a trigger past the coil to disturb the magnetic field that this current creates in the coil. This 'pulse' is resisted (electrically) by a capacitor (condensor) in the electronic circuit for about 1.0mS, during which time the whole rest of the circuit board turns on the coil. This sudden spike of current charges the coil until this condensor 'times out' the pulse circuit, and then the coil collapses to make a spark. It is a short, hot spark of duration set by the trigger capacitor (condensor) and is cleverly created to use less power than even the Kettering designs of the other SOHC4 bikes, because the coil only eats current during the very short charging spike. These coils are very low resistance so they can 'move' this fast, so they are not suitable for the earlier Kettering designs: installing them onto the Kettering bikes can melt the coils and their wiring.

This CDI design persisted in many Japanese bikes for decades afterward, as it is highly successful, so long as the electronics live.

In the 1970s, several "electronic" systems appeared for these, and other, Kettering-fired bikes. The most common one is the Dyna S type, where a magnet on the points cam momentarily turns OFF a Hall-Effect switch on the trigger board (one for each coil, 2 circuits per bike). These Hall-Effect switches turn OFF when a specific magnetic field is passed next to them: in the Dyna system they stay ON until Dyna's magnet, mounted on the [modified] points cam, swings past them. This ON state simulates the Kettering points being closed to charge the coils. The fly in this ointment is: they are ON all the time until the magnet swings part them, so the coils are drawing current all that time. Since these bikes have alternators that were only sized to deal with 1 coil charging up at a time, the coil electrical load is now doubled. This drains a lot of extra power from the bike. The 500/550 has the biggest trouble with this system, as its alternator rotor is poorly made and the alternators do not make much power as the result. Even the 750 has trouble supplying enough power for this unless it is ridden on the hiway at speeds over 4000 RPM for most of the ride time.

The Tytronics system is very much like the Dyna system. Newer versions of this one are reputed to have 'dwell limiters' in them to reduce the ON time somewhat, but the jury is still out as to how well this works, and its longevity, given where it is made.

Boyer-Bransden made an optical version a long time ago that was a compromise in power consumption between the Kettering and Dyna designs. Today this system seems to be available in UK on-and-off, and may come to the rescue of those who do not wish to live with points at all. It uses optical switches instead of Hall-Effect devices, with timing circuitry added to reduce over-consumption of coil charging power time duration.

My own Transistor Ignition merely uses the existing points to switch transistors instead of coils, in order to remove the arcing that wears the points. Since most of the points foot wear is caused by the points arc-welding themselves shut after each spark above 5500 RPM, this box stops that wear completely. This prevents point-foot wear almost 100%: I ran 9 years with my own unit #2 (Terry in AUS has #1) with no timing adjustments needed until I tore the whole engine down for rebuild. Then it was reset in 2013, hasn't needed anything since. I first developed this in 1973 to reduce the constant need to adjust points then, although it was so expensive compared to points then ($140 USD back when points cost $3, and in those $$ it would be about $280 today) that few of them got installed. Today, this is a different game, and it also supplies 100% "backup" in the form of being able to plug your points right back in if somehow the box should die. Thus, you can still ride home instead of hitching a ride to the nearest pickup truck or trailer. In America, where it is more than 3000 miles shore-to-shore and my average tour mileage was 2x to 3x that much mileage, this is a useful feature.

[HondaMan]

How about the vape system? https://www.vape.eu/

I'm afraid my German is real rusty (haven't used it since the 1980s), and I'm not dead sure what they have, but it looks like alternators for the CB500 might be there? It appears to list it as 150 watts output. Can anyone verify that?

[Deltarider]

How about the vape system? https://www.vape.eu/

I don't see any advantage over OEM. What is your problem, if any, and what do you expect?