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crowesnest3

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have been reading the variety of posts regarding coil upgrades ..... Neon ... CBR .... etc ... see where Dan seems to have put a good amount of time testing the various options ...... is there any consensus out there as to what the best coil upgrade is .... vs. none at all ....
 
I've not read of any issues after the CBR or Neon coils although there may have been. If you have the cash though. The C5 ignition is hands down the best replacement ignition available. This removes all of the old ignition and gains you both hotter spark and 3 sparks every cycle as well as adjustability not available in any other ignition.
 
Replacing a single component is always cheaper than replacing the entire system. That does leave the rest of the old system in place with old components which may fail at any time. Always your choice.
 
Neon coils are much lower resistance. Some legwork has been done for 1200's at Saunders.

"""Originally Posted by wingingiteveryday View Post
With many thoughts on the subject i have a gl1100 and 1200. The 1200 received the MSD coils and wires as per Dave's diagram but missed the ballast resistor part. After a few rides and about 300 miles the bike shut down. 60 seconds later it started and ran. It did that probably 3 or 4 times then it smoked the black CDI box. If i understand all of the suggestions here for 1200's i need a ballast resistor on the blk/wh wire going to the coil. I found AL795 at AutoZone for $3.95. I put it in line on the blk/wh wire. It has no marking for "pos and neg" or "in and out". Do i need any other correction, i had already bought the replacement black CDI (unfortunetly). Do i need resistors in the MSD wire? BY THE WAY When originally installing the MSD Coil i did join the two black and white wires together only because they were seperate wires, not looped from one coil to the other on the OEM coils.

Any thoughts? I'd hate to smoke another CDI."""

It is withing a long sticky on their tech ref page. If you type "1200" into a "search this thread" you'll find some successes and failures for 1200's using the Neon coil.

1500 coils and many 80's bikes are plentiful and the same as stock.
 
One of the issues with these bike coils is that the 12 VDC wire to them - black/white stripe - generally provide power to other components and in doing so, the voltage loss at the coil can be up to 2 VDC. Coils need power as close as possible to 12 VDC to operate properly.

An inexpensive, quality mod is to provide power from the battery directly to the coils where the black/white wire connects to the coil(s). This can be through a relay so that the power is off when the bike is off. Use the black/white wire that comes from the kill switch to the coils as the relay energizing power source. The relay does not require a lot of voltage to operate.

Good luck
 
I put Neon coils on my '82 a couple of years ago. Got from a local pick-a-part for $10. The resistance of these coils is about .7 ohms, which is almost exactly the same as the OE coils. So I left the OE ballast resistor in the circuit so as to not fry the ignitors. I don't notice any performance improvements over OE coils but with the ballast resistor in the circuit it's probably got about the same spark intensity as OE.

DaveO430 over at the Saunders site (the guy who started the Neon coil thread) has Neon coils on an 1100 and is not using the ballast resistor and hasn't had a problem with ingnitors. But he is using a relay to switch power to the coils so higher current is not going through kill switch etc..

Is anyone here running neon coils with no ballast resistor?

Brian
 
Great question, :good: have yet to stray from stocker's as i have a spare or two laying around. :nea: When the Lucas part's (JUNK) :rant: were replaced with American part's, on my Triumph, or anyone else's, English bike, :Awe: a ballast resitor was always put in series B4 the coil! :yes:
 

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