Why couldn't we adapt (or could we) an after market ignition system to fit the Vision? MSD, Dyna, etc. using the stock pick-up coils and poss the stock coils? maybe one of the variable timing units...
at over $300 a pop from Yamaha, there has to be another way. I have a friend with an 83 xv500 in the same boat with a dead TCI.
any thoughts?
--Lucky
Hey Lucky ... thanks for email other day on this subject. Haven't been to board in awhile.
Yes .... why not adapt another ignition system. $1,000,000 question is .... where to begin.
Remember MSD / Excell / Dyno , etc... are all CDI systems. We don't have that. We use an "Induction" system. So its not just "Plug-And-Pray". There's probably no-one making an after market inducion system. So.... the pickups / ignitor / coils would all have to be replaced.
Still the question might be ... can we at least use/adapt a CDI system to the bike. Maybe.
Certainly you'd need to talk to the right technical people to even THINK about using the pickups we have. That is tech stuff going over my head anyway.
The flywheel magnet is probably usable ... so fabricating CDI pickups around the flywheel is the best bet.
Again.... would need a CDI company with a GOOD return policy while in this "trial-and-error" approach.
ALSO ... remember that even with a tunable timing CDi (like MSD has ... fairly expensive).... the exact timing curve is hardwired into the OEM ignitor. Not sure that's a big deal but certainly is a question mark (?)
STILL (I think) repairing the Vision CDi is a very practical solution. I just last week recieve new transistors which I think are the best replacements for what we have. MUCH MUCH better than what is in the OEM unit.
Here's a link:
http://www.nteinc.com/specs/2300to2399/NTE2317.html
I have gotten emails from several guys repairing other bike CDI with this transistor with good success. I am going to give this a try with some bad tci I have laying around soon. I am waiting for SPRING to commit itself before I uncover my bike.
Cheers - Leather
Yo! brother Dave L., it certainly is good to see that you're still alive and well. Haven't heard from you in so long and was getting concerned. God Bless You. Cheers!
ok, i'm 90% following what your saying. one of my questions concern the pick up coils, what makes ours (or any) unique? as i understand it when the pole piece on the rotor passes the pick up coil it produces a signal (from the colapse of the magnetic field?) that travels to the tci telling it what position the crank is in. i'm wondering if the "signal" sent is a standard thing that if the manufacturers could test they could mesure and adapt to one of their units. isn't the tci basicly a switch that turns the coils on & off, and the pickups tell that switch when to operate?
I personally don't care if i have to change coils, wires, etc. i would think the hardest part to change over would be the pickup coil setup.
my point is we have pickups that seem to be relitivly trouble free. so we have a source of info for our ign sys to tell the coils when to fire. advance, etc could be taylored to match.
or an i dreaming?
You are exactly right. The pickups are useable.
BUT
without invoking Ohms law... the bottom line is the ignition box is designed with a certain resistance in mind. If the pickup coil does not match this its like plugging the wrong speakers into your stereo (probably the first time you ever heard the term "Ohm" ... like me right?) So the results would be unpredictabe.
So its really just a matter of getting the spec for our pickups (little time spent with an Ohm meter). AND THEN ... (this is the big part) ... getting an after market engineer tell you what you need ... another words... their "SPEC".
YES ... it can be done. Except, its not going to be me. That's sort of a joke but .. in reality the truth. Will take someone smarter and with more time than I have. Who knows...... I like that "outside-the-box" thinking.
- Cheers
P.S. QBBS Glad to be back ... looking forward to summer (and not one in "Southwest Asia")
No idea really, but would it be possible to wire a resistor somewhere along the pickup coil wire to increase resistance, thereby solving that problem for about half (ones that operate on more resistance than ours) "black boxes"?
Yeah ... why not, it could be that easy. Just adjust the resistance value (up or down) to match what the box needs.
Might be worth a call (or email) to a MSD tech rep. See what they say (or how hard they laugh).
I'm still busy working on that "rocket-pack" idea :-)
I talked to the people at Dyna ignition and they said they didn't have a product that would work, and I sent out emails to several other ignition companys. I have heard from one so far, to quote:
"Hi Lucky. We have a bit of good news. If you are sure the sensors are magnetic type and not hall effect or lite triggered we can help you."
I just sent them an email confirming that they are, and that I have a set of pick-ups i could send them. I wouldn't be surprised if they wamted a rotor to go with it. does anyone have one they would be willing to lend or donate?
I'll keep you posted on any other developments.
--Lucky
Lucky -
I have a spare flywheel if that would help (I assume that's what you are refering to as "rotor"). Its on a bike but I assume I can get it off (you know how those things are).
Let me know if they want it and I'll send it direct to them.
Also ... they might want the timimng curves which are in the Yamaha service manual (do you have that... I figured you did).
- Leather
Wow, this could be really excellent news, Lucky! I've got a 'parts' bike sitting around too, that I could pull things off of. If I could find them, of course... NFC where the part in question is. But... I've got a manual! :>
I think i remember seeing the timming curves, i did see a few other relivent pages explaning the ign system while flipping thru it in the "reading room" i'll have to scan those pages for them. i'm hoping they don't ask for a working TCI. i don't think anyone will want to part with that (can't say i blame them)
--Lucky
here is todays surprising reply:
"HI Lucky. I will proceed to get you prices. The more you order the better price we can get you"
I sent them a reply saying that i was surprised that they didn't ask for specs, yada-yada-yada,
Could they give me more info on what they had in mind, yada-yada-yada
and unless the price was that good, we'd be buying them individualy, yada-yada-yada
as allways, i'll keep you posted.
--Lucky
PS, yes, i was watching Seinfeld today
Hey,
Just curious, what was the final status on this?
the reason I'm asking is that I've been having the front cyl
cut out lately and then over the weekend while doing some maint. I pulled the plugs on the TCI and found the connectors
had turned a lovely shade of green. I'll be cleaning them up for sure but would like to get away from my dependence on
this device for a reliable bike.
thanks
-Ron
sorry, forgot to update this thread, mad busy lately, They wrote back that that they couldn't make anything work, i got the same response from everyone i wrote to... :(
Hey Ron,
Am digging my bike out of moth-balls next week. Still have your "broken" TCI and the replacement transistors sitting on my workbench. Will swap them out for the big "experiment" and if it works will send back to you. One of my spring projects. But easier now since I have my bike torn apart a little for other repairs.
- leather
Hey Ron,
Am digging my bike out of moth-balls next week. Still have your "broken" TCI and the replacement transistors sitting on my workbench. Will swap them out for the big "experiment" and if it works will send back to you. One of my spring projects. But easier now since I have my bike torn apart a little for other repairs.
- leather
ok, cool.
btw I did locate a programmable cdi ignition system
that will probably work but there are issues.
What I wanted to discuss was wasted spark and if that pricipal could be applied to the vision.
here are the details, because the stock ignition treats each cylinder like a separate one cyl. ie separate pickups/coils but combines the trigger into the module w/separate switching transistors, you'd really be talking about 2 cdi modules, one for each cyl. I'm wondering if I could just use one pickup as the trigger, one dual coil ( like they use one 4 cyls.) to fire
each cyl twice, once on power and again on exhaust.(wasted spark) this would obviously take quite a bit of testing. the big issue here is the timing of the power stroke on the vision.
I've never had the crank out so I don't know what the degree offset is.
Hopefully someone can tell me at what degree the crank pins are located.
any and all comments are appreciated.
thanks.
-Ron
Hi Ron,
The cylinder angle on the Vision is 70 degrees which is the info you would need. The crank has no offset to it like Honda does. The other thing is that the Vision does have the wasted spark as far as I know. If the trigger is on the crank then you have 2 sparks per revolution. I doubt that they would go to the trouble to have the black box decipher it all. I could be wrong, but this is the way I understand it.
I would bet that Electomotive could do an ignition for the Vision if they wanted to and someone had enough $. If you have enough of that you can get just about anything done.
Jeff
ok Jeff,
I'll give you all of that but that still leaves the problem
of 2 separate pickups/coils/transistors.
where on the vision, there are 2 triggers, one for each cyl.
you'd still end up with needing 2 cdi units (based on the way they are built.) I guess the right way to do it is to decode
the functions and see if most or all could be encapsulated
into fewer parts and maybe simplify the circut.
This will definately take quite a bit of work...
anyone else have any thoughts, comments ?
-Ron
Hey Leather,
question; is there a way to properly test the stock switching
transistor? (assuming I isolate it from the board of course)
While it's nice to throw a bunch of new parts at the problem,
I'd like to try and find out what is actually bad and maybe what caused it.
I did find a source for the NTE2315 at mouser.com
I've had an account with them from back when I picked up
some parts to fix a guitar amp. They have quite and extensive
catalog and if you give them your mailing address (you may not want to) they'll send you their huge quarterly catalog.
Also, I'm finding some really interesting things here on the net.
check out this document.
http://e-www.motorola.com/brdata/PDFDB/docs/AN2159.pdf
Thanks.
-Ron
ok, update...
I was able to find some testing info.
turns out I didn't need to isolate the transistors, I could test them right on the board.
Luckily my Fluke meter has a diode testing function built in.
What I did find was that the transistors check out as ok,
so now I'm looking elsewhere for the problem.
Just a note for those of you who might be looking for a used tci unit. There seems to still be plenty of them around, for example, besides posting here on the board, I posted to a m/c salvage service and got no less than 9 reply's with prices ranging from 50 to 250 us$.
-Ron
bump
What you may not know is that the early Dyna ignitions used in the 80's relied on the centrifugal spring advance mechsm. All new stuff relies on the engine's rpm sensor. In fact the OEM on ours is that type. The TCI is smarter than you think. So a simple swap, it is not.
It should be possible to get the characteristics from a working ignition module (TCI = transistor controlled igninion not a CDI = Capacitive discharge ignition).
If you monitor the signal from the front cylinder pickup coil and the front cylinder ignition coil, it should be posible to log how the timing is advanced, and at witch point the spark fires. The circuit probably will be exactely the same for the rear cylinder. In the TCI probably only analog components are used since not much digital components were used. It should be possible for one with a good knowledge of electronics (both digital and analog) to build a new TCI with a micro controller specially programmed for use with the vision. The amount of advanced spark is only related to the engine's RPM's.
Not only could it be possible, but someone is working on it, still experimental.
http://www.sportdevices.com/ignition/ignition_TCI.htm
That setup uses a PIC, I would use a OOPIC to get the added ease of coding the chip, but not only could you make an ignition module(doing timing comparisons), but you could also have it maybe(depending on memory, flash space, and design of board) get things like speed, tach, gas, even gps on a big LCD dash screen.
I like the OOPIC and play with things like it for robotics, but as a blackbox, it would be vary powerful.
I would try this if i had the money and resources, but then so would most of you. ;D
That is quite a link, I love it, he notes in the source tho that it's for a 2-stroke engine, does that matter in our application or would that just end with the "wasted spark"
I would imagine you would need to change the timings used, if someone had a scope, you could watch the pulsing on the two pickups for the TDI and map the timings, of course you would have to test it at IDLE, low, medium and high rpms.
Most that code is comparing delay and retarding the time to discharge. I would imagine it shouldn't be too hard to change it, if you understand ignition timing well, something I'm still learning.
An OOPIC could be used and more sensors added to check for throttle position and even air flow, so you could get more percise maps but that would require a great deal of calculating to get all the timing adjusted to all the new sensors, or some slick code, same diff. A PIC should be able to easily have sensors added to it, considering ultra-sonic navigation is possible with them, reading things like temp or tach would be a piece of cake by comparision.
Speaking of which, there is a another interesting link there on how to use a stepper motor to build a digital tach.
http://sportdevices.nmine.com/ignition/tacho.htm
BTW,
OOPic is an object-oriented Pic,
http://www.oopic.com/
If you haven't done any coding before, it basically is a higher level coding language(meaning easier to read and more flexible to write, at the cost of processing times).
The PIC uses C and ASM(assembly) which are low level languages(C is higher than ASM). The OOPIC uses a language more closer to C++, but not exactly C++.
Below this is the machine code which is the ones and zeros the hardware reads.
The main issue I see for using PIC's is having to seal and epoxy all the components to protect them from weather and vibration. This just means careful planning of any circuits to allow for easy changing of parts that are likely to have issues(rectifiers, the PIC itself, transistors), using chip sockets and rolling your own ICs can help with this.
Also not too sure on signal interference, might need to shield the box used to house the PIC to prevent any interference, main concern here is having the PIC reset itself while running on the freeway. :o