Lucas Rita

My latest project came with a Lucas Rita ignition. Cool1 I have read and heard stories about how great they are and I am looking forward to checking it out.
Then as I was wiring it up I noticed that there were only 4 wires not the 5 that the wiring diagram shows. The white with purple wire was missing! Great.
The unit isn't podded in plastic so I'm able to remove the cover and look at the circuit board and I can se where it goes. Dug in my stash of stuff and found a white with purple wire, it is a 16ga wire and what is in it is an 18ga. Hope that won't make a difference but I don't know. To be honest I'm a bit afraid to solder it back in thinking I might fry something else. I am thinking I would take it to a computer repair place and have them do it. What do you think?

John in Texas

No reason not to do it yourself. 'Not sure of the post; is the wire you're going to use larger than what is already in the box? If so, then no worries there. As for when it comes time to solder, the only caveat is to not use any form of acid flux (such as for repairing radiators), but rather, a rosin flux solder.

Nathan

:roll:

I have a Rita in the shed that I fitted to the guzzi - it got removed when I twin plugged it and John Carpenter at Rita said it was not designed for driving twin coils.
During its use - when it never gave a hint of a problem, unlike its replacement - there were a few detail design changes and some of the wiring was altered. The mists of time fog the exact reasons are lost, but maybe you can double check that you don't have a one or the other.

As far as I know, the Rita was pretty much the same between models, the only changes were the signal cam and fittings.

Isn't the Lucas Rita the same Lucas Opus unit which was used on Jaguar cars some years ago ?

dynodave said:

:roll:

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Hi Dave,

Yea...here we go again.

Nater_Potater said:

No reason not to do it yourself. 'Not sure of the post; is the wire you're going to use larger than what is already in the box? If so, then no worries there. As for when it comes time to solder, the only caveat is to not use any form of acid flux (such as for repairing radiators), but rather, a rosin flux solder.

Nathan

Click to expand...

Nathan,
Well I have soldered the missing wire into place. Hope to put a battery into it over the next few days and see if we have life. Keep you posted.

John in Texas