BR8ES

[blowit]

OK, so it may not be maketable, so what. Devise a cheap fix and help a brotha out. Size of cap and where to put it. Shouldnt take to much for someone with your expert knowledge in the subject. As shitty as the spark is in our bikes, it seems to hold up. If you know a way to make it last, Ive heard they fail a lot, then a fix for longevity would be a great contribution to the community. If you want to keep it hush, then PM me with the fix. I will not say a word to anyone till you get your patent. The the word will be to call you. My bike is fairly new and dont want any issues that can be avoided.

 

 

You make it sound as the CDIs fail all the time. I am just curious who all has replaced theirs? We rarely see them fail here for some reason. I tell you, to be honest, this is our busy season and we are just trying to get people taken care of right now. We try not to R&D in the spring. One thing worth noting is if we could tear apart a few bad CDIs and determine the failure point, that would help a bunch but those CDIs are potted so goodluck on that one. You will destroy the whole thing trying to get it apart. Now---If I could get my hands on the PCB layout of the CDI, we could develope a test for it and maybe reverse engineer it.

 

Either way, at this point, even if I do tell you how to help the power situation, how would we ever know if it is helping the CDI live longer? Well, if you want to play, you will not hurt anything by adding a 470uf in the circuit from radio shack. make sure to purchase a film and foil or metalized cap. They typically have a metal case. These are designed more for this application. They are also called run caps in motor applications. The ceramics would fail in short order.

 

The voltage on the cap is a rating of its break down. I would get the highest voltage you can find because that just means it will be bigger and be able to tolerate more voltage. You would install this cap in the AC+ line from the stator going to the CDI. This needs to be installed in series and if the cap is polarized, make sure flow is shown correctly.

 

If you have any issues, the cap will just fail and it will go open line or closed line, either way, it would not hurt anything if it failed. If it boils the resin in the cap, you might need a higher voltage cap. I would say 100V should get you taken care of. Now testing it, well we use DAQ equipment to log that data so I guess it might be one of those things you install, leave it alone, and if the CDI never fails, you can say it works!! Really, this stuff can get technical fast but adding a little capacitance in your life will not hurt the system. I just cant offer an easy way to test you improvements. If you can find an oscilloscope, you might be able to track your transients and harmonics but logging data really helps.