Can i ask which coils did you use... OE type or the IC35 unit supplied by Pazon??Pazon Surefire. Cheap and reliable. Have them on 4 bikes.
Someone sells a gasket for the points cover that is significantly thicker than original and is supposed to be a thermal insulator. Would that help keep the area cooler?
I don't feel picked on, I asked the question because the answer is unknown to me. I am in the process of assembling a Commando and looking at options and thought perhaps someone may have experience with this.Not to pick on you but just as an example of the unknown..
I guess that is the heart of the question, will insulating the points cover result in the area under the points cover be cooler or warmer or will the difference be negligible.Do you then cool the cap ONLY by air? heated by exhaust pipe...
Is holding the aluminum cap off of the timing chest with an insulator a good thing?
Does the timing chest act as a heat sink to pull some heat away from the cap by original metal to metal contact?
That brings up another thought, will using the "S" pipes cause the cap, area under the cap to be cooler.Do you then cool the cap ONLY by air? heated by exhaust pipe...
Thanks, Jim
More info re MY setup. Not sure if this could be an issue but I'm wondering about poor grounds? I was just looking over notes I had made on my Norton since I bought it in '06...
I know some folks say that no additional grounds are necessary because there are red wiring harness (Pos) grounds where necessary but IMO, that's not really true. The OEM points and the Trispark (not sure how other EI's work) both ground to the engine case. The breaker points do it via the points backing plate being bolted to the engine; the Trispark does it with a separate ground wire, attached to the engine via one of those same bolts. IF the engine itself is not well grounded perhaps that could create a problem. Yes, in theory, the harness ground to the head steady SHOULD be an adequate ground to the engine. But OHM-ing it out on my Norton years ago showed was slightly more resistance from the pos terminal on the batt to the side of the engine than there was from the Pos terminal on the batt to the head steady ground point.
So I added a separate 12Ga wire Pos wire directly to the engine. I connected it with a ring connector under the OEM Pos wire ring connector at the head steady to a ring connector under the bolt that connects the head steady bracket to the engine. This wire has been in place since shortly after I took delivery of the bike in '06. With that wire, there was no resistance difference from the engine case to the Pos batt terminal.
I am not knowledgeable enough to KNOW if a less than ideal ground could cause an EI failure as opposed to an intermittent misfire but I'm just tossing it out there...
Actually, my thinking is the contrary... if an electrical issue is causing something to overheat due to internal load / current then venting the points cavity as much as you like ain’t gonna make any difference.
Tigernut says that people had tried venting the covers “all to no avail”... which I read as supporting my theory that failures are not due to ambient temps in the points cavity.
I have a dedicated ground wire there too. Not taking any chances on where the electricity may or may not find it's way back to the battery.
I was going through some old wiring threads here this morning and found several posts where folks simplified their wiring by eliminating "those excess red [ground] wires." I pretty much do the opposite!
When I was in my late teens, I thought it would be cool to relocate the battery on my old 170 CID 6 cylinder, beige 4-door, 3-speed on the column, 1964 Ford Fairlane, to the trunk. Hey, that's what the racers did! So I did that and connected the neg terminal to the body/frame there in the trunk. Since the frame was part of the circuit, what could go wrong with that? Turned out that the frame and engine weren't really very well connected as far as the high-current demands of the starter were concerned and about 1/2 the time the starter relay just clicked. Turned out the circuit was being "completed" poorly and intermittently through the leaf springs/rear axle/driveshaft. Based on advice from a friend who worked at a gas station, I added a ground strap up front from the frame directly to the engine and everything was OK. Sure, the original setup was much more efficient but hey, sometimes the price of a "cool upgrade" is dealing with the reduced performance/efficiency!
FWIW: It's hard to look cool in a '64 6 cyl Ford Fairlane even if the battery is in the trunk. OTOH, a '64 427 Fairline Thunderbolt...Now THAT"S a different thing!