Almost Stranded

I was a bit bored today, as my kids have gone back home and my wife was at work. Bike riding is out at the moment as there is about 5 inches of snow outside. So I thought what can I quickly do in the freezing garage? Ideally I want to take a bit off the bike and check or refurb it in the house. Ah! The Boyer stator plate wires. As I’d had a mystery complete engine cutout at the top of the Klausen Pass in august so this was on my “things to check over the winter” list. Right, so out to the garage then. I opened the points cover and saw a sticky label with name “A. Woods” (a former owner perhaps?) had already been in there and replaced the crappy standard crimped connectors with equally crappy Lucas bullet connectors. To his / her credit they had put some foam inside to stop them shaking around. I actually think the weight of the connectors shaking around is the problem. It all looked sort of OK, but I’d already bought some WAGO replacement PCB screw terminal connectors, so I marked the plate and the casing, and whipped out the plate.

In the house I was pleased to find that once I removed the strain relief cable tie, the Black/White wire had an obvious issue. I cut the insulation and pulled it off. All but 5 strands were intact. So although this probably wasn’t the reason for the mystery ignition failure in August it was a good catch. I also noted some very poor “cold” solder joints on each of the bullets, so perhaps one of those caused my issue. Anyway one things for sure, it wouldn’t be long before I became “Stranded” (sorry couldn't resist)

I removed the solder and remains of the wires, which leaves two holes 10mm apart. The connectors I bought are three way, but the outer two PCB pins line up exactly, so I cut off the center pin and filed it down flush, then put a blob of superglue between the holes to stick it in place and soldered the two pins. Once soldered, I applied more superglue around the joint and let it set. Job done !

One thing I noticed is that the plate hasn’t been sitting flat, as I can see that two of the large solder joints by one of the pickups have been crushed down by the clamping studs, which has slightly distorted the baseplate. I wonder if that’s why somebody has filed out the adjuster slot on one side?

I’ll pop the plate back in tomorrow.

If anyone wants me to do the same to their Boyer, I’ll do it F.O.C. just the return postage and the cost of the connector to pay (which was about $2 I think).

By the way these pics were taken with one of those clip-on smart phone macro lenses. I’m really impressed!!

Happy New Year one and all !

I cannot open the pics?

Couldn't work out how to embed images, but got it now

Solder is an anathema to anything that vibrates. No vehicle manufactures ever use solder unless it’s potted or on a circuit board. Get a good crimper and keep the soldering iron in the tool box.

Tidy job Cliffa, nice work.

JimC said:

Solder is an anathema to anything that vibrates. No vehicle manufactures ever use solder unless it’s potted or on a circuit board. Get a good crimper and keep the soldering iron in the tool box.

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Did you even bother to read or look at what hes done , it would appear hes soldered terminal blocks to the CIRCUIT BOARD one of the applications you recommend .
When mine started playing up the wires coming through the timing cover had turned to powder and just crumbled

splatt said:

Did even bother to read or look at what hes done , it would appear hes soldered terminal blocks to the CIRCUIT BOARD one of the applications you recommend .
When mine started playing up the wires coming through the timing cover had turned to powder and just crumbled

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Not well enough, evidently. He did things correctly. I’ve seen so many posts insisting to use solder for connecting stranded wire I guess I reflexively judged cliffa doing the same. My bad.
Too bad Boyer didn’t know how to connect wires properly.

Got them thanks

That seems to be the weak point on the Boyer. I have had to resolder the leads on the plate as well as shorten them and reattach them due to broken pickup leads caused by the ty wrap.

I believe Paton uses screw terminals.

Cliffs:

Where did you get the screw terminals? Do you have a part no.?

Beat me to it - I was going to say this is what Pazon do!

I also like the zoom-able images

Nice work Cliffa

arch said:

That seems to be the weak point on the Boyer. I have had to resolder the leads on the plate as well as shorten them and reattach them due to broken pickup leads caused by the ty wrap.

I believe Paton uses screw terminals.

Cliffs:

Where did you get the screw terminals? Do you have a part no.?

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Hi Arch,

I got them from here...

https://www.doitgarden.ch/de/p/612508700000/steffen-anschlussklemme-steckbar

They are re-branded WAGO connectors, and only have WAGO 237 underneath.

And as you see cost 4 Swiss Francs (~ $4) for a pack of two. Happy to send you some if you like @ cost plus postage. P.M. me your address and I'll pick some up on Wednesday.

P.S. If you liked my post please "Like" it.

Cheers,

Cliffa

arch said:

That seems to be the weak point on the Boyer. I have had to resolder the leads on the plate as well as shorten them and reattach them due to broken pickup leads caused by the ty wrap.

I believe Paton uses screw terminals.

Cliffs:

Where did you get the screw terminals? Do you have a part no.?

Click to expand...

It wasn’t the tie wrap that caused those pickup wires to break. After all, many, many wires are successfully held in place with tie wraps. It was the solder and vibration that caused the wires to break. When stranded wire is soldered it becomes solid, not very flexible, at all. Now introduce vibration, which is essentially bending that solid wire back and forth, at a very high rate. It’s going to break. Visually the wire appears to be intact, but in fact has fractured.

Cliffa has an excellent fix for the Boyer. Others have unsoldered the wires from the pickup plate and replaced with 4-40 screws, making studs to attach the wires with crimped, not soldered, ring lugs.

That's a very good conversion ,the pickup plate is now the same as the earlier Boyer set up,I wonder why Boyer changed to the later type bullet connectors? Maybe cost?

Hi Baz, thanks for the compliment. Yes, i was wondering the same thing actually. I wonder if anybody has ever let Boyer's know of this issue? I may drop them a line to see if they are aware.


Cheers,

Cliffa

JimC said:

It wasn’t the tie wrap that caused those pickup wires to break. After all, many, many wires are successfully held in place with tie wraps. It was the solder and vibration that caused the wires to break. When stranded wire is soldered it becomes solid, not very flexible, at all. Now introduce vibration, which is essentially bending that solid wire back and forth, at a very high rate. It’s going to break. Visually the wire appears to be intact, but in fact has fractured.

Cliffa has an excellent fix for the Boyer. Others have unsoldered the wires from the pickup plate and replaced with 4-40 screws, making studs to attach the wires with crimped, not soldered, ring lugs.

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Actually Bob, The cause of the near failure of mine and many other's Boyer units (as far as i can see from previous posts (such as this one ) ) has nothing to do with solder, but was the the cable tie. The wires fail directly under the upper edge of the tie. If you look again at the pictures I posted you will see that there is no solder in sight of the broken strands. Boyer actually pot the last few millimeters of the fly-leads so the soldered joint won't crack. As I stated in my original post, I suspect that the weight of the connectors shaking around on the end of the fly-leads is the reason for the failure at the last strain relief point (the cable tie). This theory seems to be born out by this very helpful article (under "securing wires"). I and many other have simply eliminated the need for the connectors.

I notice that Boyer now fit an extra piece of of rubber under that tie. I wonder if that's cured the issue?

Cheers,

cliffa.

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.

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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McIntosh amps, no doubt.

Well I had my old Boyar in my Norton for over 32 years without any problems at all, even when I replaced it with the Joe Hunt my old Boyar was put into a mate's Norton bobber that he aquired and as far as I know its still working good to this day, with the Boyar in my Norton it was a every day ride so only had problems when the battery got old and worn out, but it always fired up.

Ashley

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

https://eshop.wago.com/JPBC/0_5Star...mmonPageHandler.jsp&activatedPage=CATALOGPAGE

Part number 237-133

If you want some and don't have a local supplier I can send you some @ $2 each plus postage.


Cheers,

cliffa

JimC said:

McIntosh amps, no doubt.

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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!