On one of my bikes a capacitor would fail when the bike got hot. It left me stranded once. That was with a stock setup. On another bike I have a Martek that the previous owner put on it. It is very old, but it is still working. This Martek does not have that many miles on it though, as in the 6 years that I have the bike I only put about 1kmi. The guy before me did not ride the bike much either. Some miles on the bike that came from me were during very hot 100 degree days....so I am sure the thing did get hot.
Reading in the past about all the (early) electronic ignition failures, I never took my bike with aftermarket ignition too far from home.
It seems that aftermarket is not unique in having ignition system issues. Ford TFI comes to mind, as well as Honda accord ignitor failures in the early 90's Accords...I am sure there were many more, it's just those two I have personal experience with. All of those problems seemed to have disappeared in the OEM ignitions. I am sure that the aftermarket has benefited from the experience as well.
--Nick
Well, as luck would have it, one of my CB's (K2) developed an intermittent no-spark condition on cylinders 2-3 I had bought a Dyna S for it about 2 years ago. At that time I was thinking that I was buying myself some trouble-free miles and since I only ride that bike a couple of times a year, I figured that the ignition would outlast me, but ....... my Dyna S decided to quit completely one day which made it very easy to troubleshoot, but left me stranded.
A call to Dynatek, and after a long hold I get to talk to Larry, who insists that Dyna S is the very best ignition available.They sell, according to him, about 1000 units/year worldwide, and only get about 40 back. Larry says that he also has Dyna S on his bike without any problems, and that he was a customer before he became an employee.....that's how much he believes in his product! Larry tells me to send the unit back to Dynatek's new location in Belgrade for evaluation. He hints that even though the unit is about 2.5 years old they might "take care" of me seeing that I only have about 10 rides on it.
I should have read this thread twice, before spending time and money to send them the failed ignition....
I wait for a (promised) call back from Dynatek (once they receive and test my unit)......after 19 days I realize that I have to follow up myself.
Three calls later (basically the same pattern as Mark's), long holds, etc., I get to talk to a gentleman who tells me that they tested my ignition, verified that one of the transistors is bad, and that he could "take care" of me and send me a new unit for $70....he believes that this one would last...he tells me I have a lucky RA number of 20777....I have my doubts, and I say so....our call somehow gets disconnected. I call back and after a couple of holds of more than 15 min each, I finally get to talk to Larry, who remembers me.
He repeats the reliability story, points out that he did qualify "...take care of you given..." with a "maybe" (I wonder what would the scenario be in which they actually would take care of the out of warranty failure that he alluded to in the previous conversation?) and says that $70 on a replacement would be the best they could do, that he is not in the warranty dept., and that it is out of his hands....I remind him about what we had talked, about the low hours on the Dyna, about others having similar failures, but Larry says that he does not really care about any of that or what people think about Dynatek, He then graciously grants me a permission to quote him on that
Larry also seems to be familiar with "another company making ignition systems" for our CB's (Pamco) and tells me that I will be back begging for that $70 deal he is offering after two weeks with that "other" ignition....he claims "it is even worse then ours" ....I almost laughed when he said it
Well, at this point I asked him to please send me my unit back (to keep as a souvenir, so I would not forget my experience with Dyna S), and suggest we say our good byes....which we do.
The point of all this is: I was skeptical about the failures, customer service issues, and did not really read too closely, even though I had Dynatek's ignition on my bike, until it was my bike that would not run