Almost Stranded

MexicoMike said:

I totally agree re NOT using solder on connections where vibration is present. Solder is wonderful stuff, I use it almost daily for restoration of tube (valve) audio equipment but like many great products, it can be misused. No current manufacturer of cars, bike, boats, or airplanes uses solder for wire connections. Back in the muscle car era, when manufacturers DID use a few soldered connections on engines, the only connections that routinely failed (broke) were those soldered connections.

Though not directly related, I am also a Boyer hater. The STOCK ignition/AAU is a much superior system as far as engine performance is concerned. All of my personal experience with both leads me to that statement. If you want reduced engine performance due to the improper advance curve for the engine plus the starting problems that result with batteries at less than full charge, Boyer is the best choice. If you want electronic, go with a system that duplicates the OEM advance curve - fully advanced by 3k RPM.

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Many years ago Dyno Dave measured the advance curve produced by Boyer, Lucas Rita and the standard points auto advance unit.
It might surprise you that the Boyer and Lucas Rita have quite nice gradual advance curves with the Boyer being the more gradual of the two. The Boyer curves to full advance by about 2500, while the Rita curves to a greater full advance by about 2350 Rpm.
The Commando points / auto advance unit tested is almost an on/off switch, very harsh , no curve at all just a quick slope up from full retard to full advance by 1450 rpm.

Every AAU I've played with works this way. Its the nature of the beast, but relatively low tune engines such as the Commando engine seem to tolerate it ok.
The gradual advance curve of the Boyer has to be an improvement on the AAU on/off switch though.

Glen

http://atlanticgreen.com/boyerexposed.htm

MexicoMike said:

A bit of everything, most recently I restored a 1963 McIntosh MC225, a couple of mid-60's Dynaco ST70s. a really nice-looking 1965 Fisher X202B, and a couple of Ampex 351 pre-amps circa 1958 (and the 351 tape transport as well). And yes, I used a lot of solder!

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Do they vibrate ?

worntorn said:

Many years ago Dyno Dave measured the advance curve produced by Boyer, Lucas Rita and the standard points auto advance unit.
It might surprise you that the Boyer and Lucas Rita have quite nice gradual advance curves with the Boyer being the more gradual of the two. The Boyer curves to full advance by about 2500, while the Rita curves to a greater full advance by about 2350 Rpm.
The Commando points / auto advance unit tested is almost an on/off switch, very harsh , no curve at all just a quick slope up from full retard to full advance by 1450 rpm.

Every AAU I've played with works this way. Its the nature of the beast, but relatively low tune engines such as the Commando engine seem to tolerate it ok.
The gradual advance curve of the Boyer has to be an improvement on the AAU on/off switch though.

Glen

http://atlanticgreen.com/boyerexposed.htm

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Glen, with respect to the various advance curves you cited I think you may have missed one critical point and that is that for some reason David chose to use “distributor degrees”, by which he must mean cam degrees, as the standard Commando automatic advance unit (AAU) curve is fully advanced near 3000 engine rpm, which is consistent with the subject plot showing full advance at 1450 cam rpm. Thus the Norton AAU does not come in suddenly from idle to full advance at 1450 engine rpm, but rather at 3000 engine rpm. In my mind the AAU is in fact a very nice advance curve, as are several other EI curves, and the Boyer is the odd duck that unnecessarily trickles on forever and doesn’t provide maximum advance until it is in the 5000-6000 engine rpm range (consistent with David’s plot showing the Boyer still advancing at 2500 cam rpm, i.e., 5000 engine rpm).


In the past one of our contributing forum members, “rick in seattle” posted a variety of common Norton advance curves in engine rpm. Regrettably, as far as I can gather, these curves have all fallen victim to the PhotoBucket fiasco, thus are no longer present on the forum. However, I did make copies of 2 of them but do not have proper context surrounding the advance curves other than to say Rick had measured some and David Comeau had measured some and Rick compiled them all in a variety of XL plots. I believe as new ignition systems were introduced and accompanying data generated on said ignition systems Rick updated the plots. I wish I could tell you more about the subject plots, but can’t associate them with any particular forum entries at this juncture, so they’ll have to speak for themselves.

Yes, I did miss that, my apology.

The auto advance units I'm familiar with are admittedly somewhat worn, but when strobed do act much like an on/off switch.
It doesn't seem to matter much though, the engines tolerate the quick shift to full advance just fine.
Even with full advance at all rpm (eg. Joe Hunt mag) these old engines seem to be happy.

As to the Boyer robbing power, that is possible but I would be quite surprised if the dyno showed that.

Glen

Mine also suffered the broken wire on the back plate, that particular failure mode must have caused lots of grief over the years as, you can look at it a dozen times and think it’s OK, only when you remove the back plate and cut off the tie wrap, do you realise the truth. I bet many an otherwise good bike has been consigned to the back of the barn / shed for this!

As to the Boyer costing power, I don’t know if anyone has evidence of this on a Commando? It would be interesting to see if they did.

Sorry to repeat this for those that already know, but I definitely had that issue on a big, highly tuned triple. The Boyer on those runs a triple wasted Spark, and 4 volt coils. I’m no electronic wizard, but to my layman’s mind it just didn’t have enough concentrated spark power at high revs.

A Tri-Spark with a dedicated Spark, and dyna coils, yielded a 5bhp gain all by itself.

The subject of points ignition vs Boyer came up at a local gathering last year. Dave Wildman was present. He was always the one to beat at Westwood, a great rider and tuner.
Back in the 80s, his sidecar passenger convinced him to replace the Triumph Trident's points with Boyer.
Dave tried it as an experiment but fully expected some power loss. Instead he got 400 more RPM on the straight!


Glen

Here's my story of a Boyer failure;

http://www.motorcyclealabama.com/rides/index.php?topic=1002.0


After I got home, while researching fixes, I went this route,

http://decentcycles.com/how-to/96-boyer-wire-repair-kit

cliffa said:

Folks,
I've found the connector I used on the WAGO site..

https://eshop.wago.com/JPBC/0_5StartPage.jsp?TopNavi=0_6TopNavi.jsp&Zone=6&Hauptframe=/JPBC/CommonPageHandler.jsp&activatedPage=CATALOGPAGE

Part number 237-133

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Just an update regarding the Wago P/N 237-133. Cliff's web link above no longer works. It appears that this part number has been superseded by P/N 237-103. Wago no longer lists the 237-133 on their web site. They appear to still be available thru the vendor linked below.

Wago 237-133 vendor

It appears that P/N 237-103 is the updated product. See product data sheets for both below.

237-133 Product Data Sheet

129-103 Product Data Sheet

FYI, this style of terminal block also has a vibration failure mode. The wire will fracture between the terminal set screw and the end of the insulation of the wire. This can be eliminated by potting the terminal block and the first half inch of the wires in RTV silicone, hot glue or similar.