I've had it with the Yamaha stock CDI's. Bought a brand new one from my local Yamaha dealer 3 years ago and now after 30 000 miles it's already busted.
Anything over 4000 rpm and the bike stutters, I replaced the coil and spark plug cap and everything still the same so I'm sure it is the CDI
I'm trying to order a custom built one from Tom Bauer( Click Here) but it's gonna take about 2 weeks to arrive in South Africa with the shipping problems we have because of the lockdown.
So in the meantime I decided to experiment with something different, I bought a Chinese made CDI that is suppose to work with the TW for only R200(US $10)!
I'm gonna have to be careful with the wiring but luckily there is a good YouTube video that shows precisely how to connect everything up. Click on the title below to have a look
This thing is about half the size of the TW CDI and less than half the weight!
Wednesday is my day off and then I want to try to connect it onto my bike.
This CDI is easy to get on ebay and Aliexpress.com
I've got some good news, the bike is up and running and the engine is ticking over as smooth as silk, it's already 5:30 pm and getting dark over here so I won't be able to go for a test ride until tomorrow morning but so far I'm very impressed with the US $10 cdi
I don't know how the bike is going to perform in the higher revs, I'm going to have to wait and see how it goes
The wiring is tricky but thanks to the YouTube video I was able to do it right the first time around
Kevinwa, unfortunately it's winter in my country right now, I'm just waiting for the temps to warm up, about 3-4 hours from now I will post the full result of the test ride
I just returned from my test ride and the bike starts and idles perfectly but when I open up the throttle there is not enough power, the revs pick up but there is something not right.
I'm going to go over all the wires and connections to see if everything was done right and then I'm going to try again.
I've been chasing the problem today but no solution so far, my bike is stuttering with both cdi's, the stator and the coil are giving the right ohm readings, my cdi from America will arrive around end of next week so we'll see what happens next🙃
Proper ignition timing seems to be the issue with these Chinese CDI's. You're probably better off going with the Waterloo CDI - bad timing can ruin your top end, which will far exceed the cost of a good CDI.
There are a number of TW owners that did this conversion and was successful, just look at the YouTube video at the start of the thread so I'm wondering.... anyway I have to call it a day, its getting dark over here
I'm just going back to the proper Yamaha CDI, I don't know what went wrong with the Chinese CDI, it has a good reputation for working well but it did not work for me.
Maybe your burning up those CDI with all that high speed. I've never had an issue with mine (1993) so hopefully you get a good one that lasts the rest of your bikes life.
The issue is that Yamaha uses very non-normal timing pluses. One at 10°btdc and one at 70°btdc. I am not aware of any aftermarket CDI that will work on Yamaha. The CDI delays the 70° signal to the proper timing based on rpm. That is how it 'advances' the timing, it really delays it.
Yes, Yamaha is different, that's for sure, I ordered a new CDI from you on ebay a week ago my brother, the only problem is that ebay is not shipping to South Africa at the moment because of the lockdown so now I'm using a parcel forwarding service in the US to forward the CDI to me via FedEx so hopefully it will arrive in about a week's time over here.
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