What do a CDI box do? What are the things you need to know?
RevZilla will match any advertised price on new merchandise.
The goal is to provide the best shopping experience to every person who visits RevZilla.
You can earn $5 for every $100 you spend.You will hear about special offers and events.How it works.
If your motorcycle is newer than 1980, it probably has a black box under the seat that makes magic happen.You are reading this for your own education if you are lucky.You're wondering what a CDI does if you think yours doesn't.Let's look inside.
Capacitors are similar to batteries in that they can store energy for later.It's their ability to release all that energy quickly that sets them apart.
A dirt bike has a box in it.They are often hidden under your seat.A photo of Andy Greaser.
The basic CDI system consists of a box, a Trigger mechanism, and a coil.The box is told to fire by thetrigger, the box decides when to use the capacitors, and the spark plug goes off.The box may influence your rev limit, timing advance, and other variables related to spark, but that is all.Capacitors are not used in the same way in a popular variation of the system.All black box ignitions use the same basic components, the box, coil, and sensor, so I'll refer to them as CDI.
There is a box.It's different on an electrical engineering level, but the process is the same.A photo of Andy Greaser.
The ancestors relied on clever mechanical systems to fire the coil.As revs rose, simple machines worked together to deliver spark at the right time.The moving parts of these ignitions wear out over time.Motorcyclists accepted occasional maintenance in exchange for rugged reliability, easy adjustment, and cheap replacement costs.
The crank opens and closes a switch in a points system.Your switch will wear out eventually.Not so with modern technology.A photo of Andy Greaser.
The jump from carburetors to fuel injection was very strange.New control over their engines was given by electronics.If you'd like more on this, you can read Lemmy's timing article.Increased power, better efficiency, less maintenance, and fewer moving parts earned the system a good reputation.They don't stay problem-free.
You have a spark problem on your motorcycle.There are a lot of symptoms related to how your engine's running.As the bike warms up, the problem may get worse.It might not hold low speeds.
The charge of the battery, spark plugs, health of your coils, and the triggering mechanism have all been tested.Is it your black box?Even if your motorcycle is new, it's still good enough to have CDI.Black box ignitions fail all at once, unlike the gradual decrease in performance you would expect from a points-ignition motorcycle.Some riders retrofit their newer motorcycles with points-based systems to avoid the drawbacks of the CDI systems.Other riders swap points-and-condenser setups for more modern ones.
It is important to eliminate every variable until the box remains.Most of the time, they are sealed up like a sarcophagus.The systems are supposed to be maintenance-free, but even a loose sensor can mess with your bike.Don't count on the specifications for testing your box pin-by-pin.Replacing a suspicious box with a known good part is the best way to solve black boxes.When buying replacements, be careful.A new replacement may not be returnable if the eBay special has the same issue.
There is a rectangular bump on the Yamaha Vision.A pickup senses it.The photo is from Jetav8r.com.