What system should I use on my rephased motor

Mikes XS now has in stock Pamco ignitions for both 277° and 270° rephased motors as well as stock ignitions at prices anyone can afford.

Newtronic Ignition Install Guide
By C Bath Dec 2007 

This paper describes the installation and issues I had when installing a Newtronic (Yam6) pointless ignition kit into my XS-650 1978 special. I took a few photos’ that will demonstrate some of the points I will discuss. Hopefully this will be of some use to our members in the XS-650 club thinking of fitting such a system. 

Firstly I would recommend fitting a pointless ignition system to your bike, once they are fitted the bike will start and run much smoother than with the older points and condenser system. Secondly you never have to worry about setting the timing again, also with less moving parts this has to be a better system. 

1. The instructions in the Yam6 kit says to remove your points including base plate and disconnect the old wiring Grey and Orange, wires to both coils. Also remove both condenser wires. Remove the cam (from the shaft) which opens and closes the points.
2. Next fit the supplied base plate with sensors into the timing cavity where the points were. I found that the supplied base plate did not in fact fit. I had to reshape it to fit into the cavity. This meant before doing so I had to remove both sensors from the plate.
3. Now the instructions says to fit the supplied pointless rotor to the cam shaft position where the point cam was. Being careful not to disturb the mechanical advance mechanism. Again I found that the supplied pointless rotor did not fit the shaft. I had to pull it apart and make the hole larger so it fitted over the cam shaft snugly.
4. Next I assembled the entire point less ignition as per photo 1. I guess if the parts fitted first time the process would have taken around 40 minutes, instead of half a day.
5. Fitting the electronic unit. The instructions say to fit it to the near side left hand side cover. I found this to be a very tight fit. So I decided to fit the unit under the seat towards the rear of the bike. See photos.
6. The instructions show a wiring diagram of how the new point less sensors wire back to the electronic unit and how the unit wires back into both coils. Again I found faults. The wiring diagram is incorrect and I had to swap over the coil wiring, to make the bike run. I also had to play around with the connectors to get them to fit.

Conclusion 

Although fitting this unit was a bit of a task, it proved to be worth while doing. If anyone needs more information please e-mail me.  

Reshaped Base Plate and Rotor

 Wiring changed to make the bike run from supplied wiring diagram which was wrong.

Modified connector

Photos 3&4 Electronic unit mounting under the rear position of the seat.

Electronik Sachse in Germany now make an ignition system for the standard XS650 but I emailed them and they are willing to make one for the 90° rephased motor. Click on the picture to check out their website. The price is estimated to be around AU$500.

New Ignition System From Mark Whitebook at PROBE Engineering

There are now four distinct models available from PROBE engineering and information on them can be viewed on their new website at http://www.probe-eng.com/servlet/StoreFront 

DX-65G                                            XS 65L                                        XS-83L                                        XS-90L

1/ DX-65G is a dual fire ignition for a stock 360° motor (wasted spark/single twin output coil) which is factory set to 7500 rpm.
2/ XS-65L is a single fire ignition for a stock 360° motor (two coils) with user programmable rev limiter adjustable in 250 RPM steps.
3/ XS-83L is a single fire rephased ignition system for an 83° rephased motor (two coils) with user adjustable rev limiter.
4/ XS-90L is a single fire rephased ignition system for a 90° rephased motor (two coils) with a user adjustable rev limiter.

Dave Rayner's radical belt driven OHC posed a problem because he wanted to use the Boyer system as he could not keep the mechanical advance/retard mechanism, nor could he put one on each end of the cam for the rephased motor as an alternative. So he came up with the stacked Boyer ignition system pictured below. An expensive but workable solution and quite ingenious don't you think? Looks similar to the ARD magneto that was once available for the XS650 and nicely balances the belt driven OHC on the other side.

December 08, 2010