Swapped Boyer for Tri-Spark

Any chance I could get a virtual magic touch? I have a dead TriSpark 0005 I got from Greg that if brought back to life with the special touch I could use as an emergency spare.

Greg: The Pazons were all Sure Fire?

cash said:

Well, I've done it, and ran it until the new new Tri Spark turned up. (Mobile signals in the north of the UK are pretty poor).

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Fair play to yer !

I couldn’t do that on my bike without spare wire, connectors, and wiring tools… and instructions !

Onder said:

Greg: The Pazons were all Sure Fire?

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Yes.

"Have the electronics in the engine case with that heat makes no sense to me"

I agree BUT my Trispark, purchased/installed in 2008, has been totally bulletproof... go figure.

Its funny how so many had troubles with kick back with running Boyers but although my first Boyer was damaged by the great fire of 82 but I had its replacement trouble free from 82 to 2010 and in that time only ever kicked back 2 times, but from first timing it and once with a belly full of fuel with a lazy kick and twice it fired up from switching on the ignition when it sends a spark and fired up without kicking it, pistons were just in the right place at the right time, blew my mate out when it did that one time I was doing some work on the Norton and my mate was sitting beside the kicker and I was on the left side of the bike when I turned on the key and it fired up, my mate asked me how I did that and for months I wouldn't tell him lol.
When I replace the old Boyer with the Joe Hunt the Boyer was still working good and ended up in a mates Norton chopper he brought cheap as a non runner, had no ignition system in it, he had spare coils but nothing else.
But maybe I was lucky running the older Boyer who knows, the first one failed but wasn't the black box fault, damage from the fire but it failed after I fixed the fire damage and first ride after the fire repairs 100 miles from home visiting a mate next morning to go home it just wouldn't spark, my first EI was a Lucas Rita but if failed after 12 months back in 79.
But looks like many have had EI fail on them going back over the years on here, Trispark, Pazons, Boyers, flat/failed batteries and I had my share of low battery or dead batteries over the 34 years of running with EI, Boyers need a good battery charge.
But back in the 70s the Boyers were the one to go with and were even recommended in my high performance section of my workshop manual, Trispark or Pazons weren't around back then.
But since going with the Joe Hunt magneto my Norton has been running the best it ever has and works so well with my old Amals and it idles perfect, the best thing, no need for a battery.
We all have our choice of ignitions and I had long life out of my replacement Boyer, but I also had many problems with stock points/AAU/condensers in the early days of owning my new Norton, they even fooled the experts.

Well, here’s my meandering thoughts on this topic FWIW…

I’ve had lots of Tri Sparks on twins and triples, and I know I’m being a PITA by repeating this, but I’ve never had one fail!

The Tri Spark on my Commando has been on since 2013/14. As well as being a road bike, it has been used regularly on the track almost every year between 2014 and 2023. It is a Maney stage 3, 11;1 cr and 920cc, so as you can imagine, it generates plenty of heat, especially in track use.

Over a 9 year period, that’s a lot of heat, and a lot of heat cycles.

If failure was due to heat, mine would have failed by now. As would Mexico Mikes, coz he rides in, well, Mexico ! And Greg has similar experiences.

So, I argue that heat cannot be the main root cause here.

Also, I’ve noticed a clear trend, there are many people who have never had one fail, and many people who have had repeat failures on the same machine.

The common denominator in the above is ‘the same machine’. My hypothesis therefore, is that it is something else on said machines that is causing peoples failures, electrical noise most likely.

Of course, if I’m correct, you could still argue that Tri Spark units should be robust enough to handle electrical noise that does not seem to similarly effect other brands.

But, I just don’t buy the heat related failure mode argument, there are simply too many people out there who have not had a failure for that to be the case.

I have my tin hat on… so fire at will…

Start of poop *** Is this sort of like an oil thread or lithium versus lead acid battery thread?

Anybody with a Commando ever ride through Death Valley in July with a TriSpark ignition?

I just bought a Vape Wassell because I'm convinced TriSpark ignitions are bullet proof. I'm also going to setup a target with my dead 0005 TriSpark as the bullseye. Shoot at it with a 22 cal pop gun. *** End of poop for today anyway.

Submission of admission of guilt:

Instead of rigging up a target to shoot at, I tested the 0005 TriSpark I thought was dead with my current and different electrical wiring and components setup and it is alive and passes the tests. Which of course only means one thing and that is I also have the touch, and the newer TriSpark ignitions don't fail that easily.

I apologize to anyone who actually reads my wisecrackery. I must have done all my after failure testing on the old wiring and coil setup, and when I did that in a frustrated mode the TriSpark was indeed dead as far as I was concerned. So, I bought another one, which turned out to be an 0006. I think the coil I was using at the time was always close to out of spec. The coil I am using now is about 4X the cost of the previous one.

Now I have two TriSpark ignitions that work and only one British twin. Shite balls.

These parts are what brought the 0005 back to life:

Antigravity 8 cell Lithium-Ion battery
Compufire dual tower dual firing 45k Volt coil
My made up MSD 8.5mm Super Conductor spark plug wires with MSD rubber boots
Denso Iridium IK16TT spark plugs
Feked anti sump valve with ignition shut off supplies + ground to the coil when open. No ground when closed.
3rd party ignition switch often used on Harleys.

My Norton only has about 5 wires running around on it, so it is nothing like a fully configured stock Commando to troubleshoot.

Being annoying is my strong suit, ask my wife.

Over the years I had one guy with Triple failures. Tri-Spark replaced it once and I replaced it twice. The guy was obsessed with heat and added all kinds of crap like an air scoop. When it next failed, I would not replace it without pictures of his "perfect" wiring. The horn relay was not screwed down and was against the signal wire for one cylinder - the cylinder that was not running!

The triple has three output transistors with no extra protection like the twin has. An instantaneous short will trash that cylinders' transistor. Years later with his horn relay properly screwed down he's had no more failures and Tri-Spark and I are out of significant money.

swooshdave said:

Well, some people carry enough tools to rebuild an engine on the side of the road.

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I find it best to have another whole Commando following you around as a spare parts source....

As said most failures are from the set up of EI, wrong coils, bad wiring, bad batteries or major fire as in my case, but I had no idea why my first Lucas Rita failed, I was only young at the time, 19 years old and not mechanical minded at the time, just replaced it with a Boyer, if I didn't go down the Joe Hunt way I would still be running with the old Boyer or a Trispark if it failed, I don't think heat would affect them down in the timing cover as plenty of air flow when riding, but in some cases the pickup wires were a problem with a lot of Boyers, I never had that problem with mine, set up right EIs should last a very long time, 32 years with my old Boyer and still going when I replaced it.
Trispark has a good name and reputation, technology over the last 40+ years for our old bikes have been great in what we can do for better running and performance upgrades for our old British bikes and so far, I am happy in the road I have gone down with making my Norton better, we all make our own choice in how we set up our old bikes and hopefully make them more reliable than the good old days of the 60/70s.

just a comment on my experiences. Got the bike with boyer. Worked really well exept when I intermittently got the electric starter to work. Fitted pazon as assured it would work better with lower voltage on start. Long story but enough to say it's now back in it's box along with backplate with different lengths of pick up pins, home made rotor shims and all else ! Fitted trispark this year. It starts on the button like never before. Unbelievably I (against doctors orders) can now kick start it since the boyer system . Not been out on the road yet but huge improvement from pazon. See past gripes, Roy.

Tornado, Fit a rack to take a C70. Bulletproof !

Fast Eddie said:

Well that certainly answers the question about them never kicking back !

You do now that you have to hold it above 4,000 to strobe it properly ?

How does it time with the LED ?

I don’t strobe mine anymore. I found that setting it with the LED made it strobe cock on, so now I just set with the LED.

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Matt Rambow told me the same thing.

I replaced the Boyer on my bike with a Trispark and setting the timing identical to the Boyer and did not touch carbs.
The cold idle speed improved.
Before Trispark, I had to keep the bike from stalling at idle when cold but after, it would idle cold without stalling.
Dennis

jamesp said:

Matt Rambow told me the same thing.

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I did the same with the previous model Tri-0005A (cw) & Tri-0005B (ccw). The current model Tri-0006 (works both cw and ccw) is a little harder to get exact statically especially for us who are millimeter challenged. You can certainly get them close enough to start and idle, but I do recommend strobing them. And, of course, make sure your timing marks are right before doing any of it.

This Boyer ignition was installed in 1982. I bought the bike in 2003 and it has always been an easy starter with a steady idle. This is the warm idle. The cold idle is the same except I use the chokes.
I guess I should replace the ignition as it's 43 years old, but then most of the rest of the bike is 50 years old, so where do you stop with that logic?

worntorn said:

This Boyer ignition was installed in 1982. I bought the bike in 2003 and it has always been an easy starter with a steady idle. This is the warm idle. The cold idle is the same except I use the chokes.
I guess I should replace the ignition as it's 43 years old, but then most of the rest of the bike is 50 years old, so where do you stop with that logic?

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1982 is a while ago. I can't remember if I was even aware of Boyer in 1982. I still had a K2F on my Norton P11 and the one Commando I had for a few months around that time was still points.

Your 850 is quiet. I can hear every part moving in my 750 engine and the dry clutch makes a racket on top of that. Only time it is quiet is when the RPMs are over 2K. If you don't count the open exhaust note.

If it aint broke....

The Boyers have been around for a long time as my workshop manual has a high-performance section at the back, and they say to add a Boyer ignition for a performance upgrade I brought the workshop manual back in 1978, I built my motor to the stage one performance upgrade when converting my 850 to the Featherbed frame with a few other extra upgrades in 1980.
As I said earlier my Boyer was on the Norton for 32 years before I went down the Joe Hunt way and was still working good when I replaced it.

I put on a Tri-006 latest version about a year ago, replacing very old Boyer. Had the bike about 20 years. I haven’t been riding it much with work and other bikes but earlier this year when riding I had kickbacks which was unusual, being familiar with start process etc and having checked timing several times. I contacted Tri-Spark and they tested the unit, found a fault, and arranged a replacement with very speedy service. No problems so far on new unit, and excellent service from Steve Kelly and team!