Faulty Pazon Ignition Caused My 850 Commando to Not Start

427man said:

I tried the Boyer method of bringing the motor to TDC then setting the magnet/pick up plate so the magnet is just passing the hole. Still won't start but it stopped the kickback / back fire.

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Welcome Darrel.

Both the Boyer and Pazon ignitions require the crank to be set to 31 degrees before TDC, and not TDC (0 degrees).

Are you setting the magnet using the correct anti-clockwise timing (upper) hole in the pickup plate?

Re:

kommando said:

A friend has recently fitted a Pazon to a road going B50 and it gave major starting problems which were cured by fitting a Boyer MK3 box. Pazon did a swop but the problem persisited, a reading of the Pazon site shows an enancement over the Boyer, the ignition will not switch on until it detects 100 rpm. If you think logically about this you can see that for a Pazon to produce a spark on a kickstarted bike the crank has to move through 360 degrees before firing, it needs to sense 2 pulses from the rotor magnets for it to be able to work out 100 rpm from the gap between the pulses. On a lightly flywheeled, high compression, low kickstart geared B50 being kicked this gives a problem. Pazon on being told of the theory rapidly replaced the second unit, this works and the part number has an extra LS on the end. Seems most of the B50's being used are bumped started and the std Pazon works.

Now move this experience across to an 850 Commando, from cold a kickstart on an 850 will not move the crank far, should you risk a Pazon or wait for the rumoured low voltage Boyer thats in testing.

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Sorry Kommando, but I'm not exactly sure of what you are saying. I have a 73 850 that currently runs points and recently I bought a Pazon that I was planning to install so I am clearly interested in your post. If you could, please shed a little light on what it is you are saying. Thanks.

Hi Yellow cad, with points you get a spark as the points open but one set of points is always shut as the other opens, if you leave the ignition on the coil with the shut points overheats. With the early electonic ignitions they had the same problem but they also had a heat buildup in the box which caused relibility problems, but being as they are electronic they could modify them to sleep after a few seconds of not recieving a pluse from the rotating magnets. hence no heat build up. Boyers are programed to wake up after they recieve a pluse from the magnets so when you kick the bike the first time the magets give a pluse the black box wakes up and for the 2nd pluse they fire. On a twin or a single with wasted spark (2 sparkes per 720 degrees of the 4 stroke cycle) this is fine, Pazon have gone futther and added in an RPM threshold above which the crank must be spinning before it switches on, this is 100 rpm, to be able to detect 100 rpm it needs the gap between 2 pluses from the magnets to be less than 0.6 seconds. It can only do that by having 2 pluses, it then switches on, so logically it only fires on the third pluse. On a twin this works as you have the wasted spark and 2 cylinders, on a big BSA single that is a pig to kick over it causes problems. It would also cause problems on a twin freshly rebuilt with a tight engine.

In a March posting, Mark C. said:

Mark Cigainero said:

...The instructions clealy state that if you get the trigger wires switched it will retard the spark and make it hard if not impossible to start. That is what mine was doing. The factory error caused me to pull my hair out for a week and many lost hours trying to solve the problem. Thanks God I did not pull the timing cover to check my chain link count. I did however pull and clean the carbs twice. Anyway on suspicion I decided to reverse the wires on the plate to the opposite color code as per instructions.. This plate is by the way CLEARLY marked and any idiot could not get it wrong. Whoever assembled the Pazon at the factory got the trigger wires switched inside the sealed unit. After I put the wires on in reverse of their clear instructions the Damn thing started first kick. ...Mark C.

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In my recent efforts to get my newly-rebuilt Mk3 to start, I thought of Mark's posting and called Andy at Pazon to see if there was a simple test to insure that my new Pazon SureFire was properly built. After assuring me that all units are tested prior to shipment, he gave me the following tests:

1. Test the polarity of the two magnets. Each magnet should attract the south end of a compass. While Andy has never seen such an error, it would give the same result as switching the trigger wires, i.e., grossly retarded timing.
2. Disconnect the white lead of the module and measure the resistance between it and the yellow-black trigger wire. You should obtain 5-6 kOhms. Now measure between the white wire and the white-black trigger wire. Here you should obtain 600 Ohms.

I performed both tests, the unit passed, and I dismissed Pazon as a potential cause of my starting problems. When I finally fixed the problem (poor valve setting technique), the bike started immediately and fell into a smooth idle. The Pazon is working flawlessly. My other Pazon is on a thumper, a BSA Victor; the Pazon converted it from a cantankerous never-start bastard to a sweet single-kick wonder. The previously posted concerns of Pazon's 2-pulse logic is simply not a problem on this big-displacement single.

I sympathize with the frustration Mark went through in his troubleshooting. Still, the level of product quality and customer service I find at Pazon is very high indeed. There are many advantages to installing a Pazon unit compared to competing products (price and minimum operating voltage being two of them), and I hope that the readership of this forum will not be put off by Mark's dissatisfaction. We, as riders of classic bikes, want Pazon to stay in business.