Ron L said:
L.A.B.
Please expand on what you mean by the RITA and Boyer being "old technology" compared to Sparx, Pazon, and Tri-Spark? I am not an electronics expert, but do understand diodes, resistors, etc. What advances were made?
I'm sure that to make any direct comparison between the different systems readily available at present (as there are both analog[ue] and digital types to consider) and this would be worthy of an article needing considerable research.
I have kept up to date with the Dave Comeau info pages, it is fairly well known that at one point he was considering taking up the manufacture of the Rita system, yet this never materialised, -possibly he was aware there would be some direct competition just over the horizon?
It would be interesting to know how these older systems directly compare with the likes of the newer Pazon, Sparx and Tri-Spark units.
These modern systems (Pazon/Tri-Spark at least -don't know about Sparx) have been developed with the intention of correcting some of the shortcomings of the Boyer (and to some extent Rita) units like sensitivity to low voltage etc., and these newer units (as has been said) can have other features like idle stabilisation programmable advance and rev limiting built in.
The advance curve would (I hope?) be an improvement (even for the analogue types). I have followed the development of the Tri-Spark unit (on the TOL website) this unit was developed to improve on the performance of what was available (Boyer/Rita) for the Triumph/BSA Triples, one shortcoming being the fact that both types use a wasted spark system with all the known coil issues and associated problems of bad starting and running especially when the electric starter is used (Volt drop) on the T160 etc. the Tri-Spark unit does not use the wasted spark system so appears to function better as a result, everyone who has fitted one and commented on it have said that there was a definite improvement, in some cases it has transformed the running of the machine. And now these Tri-Spark units are also available for twins.
When I changed a (fully functioning-but old) Boyer analogue MkIII unit (that I had fitted myself many years earlier) for a Boyer Micro-Digital unit on one of my bikes (BMW) a few years ago, there was a noticeable all-round improvement in running, so that just goes to show what a few years technology can do, although I still have both the Boyer analogue MkIII and Rita units fitted to bikes I own, but would be more likely to fit either a Pazon or Tri-Spark than another Boyer or Rita (if I could get one) in future, in fact the Tri-Spark is on the shopping list for my Trident!
Although to be fair to the Boyer Bransden units in over twenty years of use over many miles I've never had a box fail, just the normal soldered wire joint fracture problem on the stator plate occurred once (on Commando).
