When will I learn to leave things alone when they are working properly?
Over the first year or so that I owned my Suzuki T500 I had a few ignition issues mainly faulty Left Hand condensors that only lasted a few hundred miles. Cheap Chinesium crap sadly. Then I found a genuine Suzuki condensor which I fitted and the bike had been great ever since.
However, the issues I had previously made me want to fit electronic ignition, the popular system for the T500 is the Vape one, which is very expensive as it also replaces the alternator. It's well over £400 and only available to ship from the EU so attracts VAT and import duty on top of the purchase price.
Then I saw a much cheaper ignition system that just replaced the points and condensors for sale via T500 specialists "the motorcycle workshop" for £180. The main man their Pete O'Dell is known as one of the best T500 guys in the business so has a great reputation.
The item on ebay wasn't branded which concerned me, however, Pete confirmed that it's actually an Accent unit, which is a good known brand. Accent don't list a unit for a T500 but Pete has then made up specially.
I went ahead and ordered one and it looked a good quality unit.
I fitted it according to the very detailed instructions and sadly it didn't work. I contacted the Motorcycle workshop and spoke to Pete, he asked me to send through pictures of my install and confirmed all looked OK. Pete tried to contact Uwe at Accent their CEO. Uwe was away on holidays. In the meantime I sussed out that the rotor part with the trigger magnets seemed to have a big gap between it and the hall effect triggers on the PCB.
I spoke to Pete about it and he reckons a previous owner has probably fitted an incorrect stator or alternator magnet ring to the bike. He did say that some people make the mistake of fitting the stator from the T250 or T350 and although they look similar they are not the same.
I spaced the PCB off the back plate and sure enough the LED that indicates the spark trigger came on when I rotated the rotor. I then tried to set the timing, but because I had taken it apart a reassembled several times the rotor was very stiff. I had to use a mole grip on it to turn it. Then disaster struck, I slipped with the mole grip and it hit the main trigger component on the board breaking it. So my electronic ignition unit was now broken and scrap, £180 down the drain!
So I had to de-install the unit and convert back to points and condensors. I then took the bike out to test it, it ran fine but then about 300 yards away from my house it misfired and then cut out, worst still there was smoke coming from the crankcase.
I pushed the bike home and investigated, the connection to one of the sets of points had come loose and shorted out on the inside of the crankcase cover. This had melted the insulated bits of the points and also fried the condensors.
I rebuilt it again with new points and condensors, the Left cylinder had a misfire though, turns out another chinesium condensor was useless! I then managed to find another genuine Suzuki one on ebay, fitted it and now the bike is running again.
But if I had left well alone and not tried to fit electronic ignition it would have saved a whole load of trouble!
My son is a bit of electronics whizz and he reckons he may be able to repair the broken electronic unit, it's certainly worth a try.
