"Finally, the CDI boxes on 1978-1981 CX500's are not ageing gracefully. These boxes are full of big capacitors, and the dielectric fluid in capacitors dries up over time, and can outright fail. Thus, operating CDI boxes are becoming a rarity these days. Usually they fail on one cylinder - intermittently to start, and then completely. CDI boxes are also very easy to kill by high resistances in 30-year-old spark plug wire resistor caps."
From Wikipedia
Two of ours failed. They seem to have a half-life of around 27 years. We are blessed with a friend who is gret with electronics. He completely dismantled one (carefully digging out all the resin) then replaced all the capacitors, diodes or whatever the electronic thingies are called, on the orignal circuit board. The bike runs beautifully, like it never has before. The other bike has had its CDI replaced with a second hand one but will probably need the treatment soon.
