CDI on ebay.... someone else wants in on the game

Just more placebo. Whenever I see the words, Speed, High Performance, Racing, or Billet, I get suspicious. These are 'buzz words' that attract the uninitiated like sugar attracts ants. I have yet to see any substantiated evidence of performance gains from these aftermarket miracle wonders. Those who make, sell or buy them will tell us how great they are but as yet, not one of them has offered anything in the way of proof.
Word of mouth, opinions, eye witness accounts, none of those show me tangible verification of any real power gains.
Until they do I ignore them and their claims and challenge them to convince me.

Tom
 
2door said:
Just more placebo. Whenever I see the words, Speed, High Performance, Racing, or Billet, I get suspicious. These are 'buzz words' that attract the uninitiated like sugar attracts ants. I have yet to see any substantiated evidence of performance gains from these aftermarket miracle wonders. Those who make, sell or buy them will tell us how great they are but as yet, not one of them has offered anything in the way of proof.
Word of mouth, opinions, eye witness accounts, none of those show me tangible verification of any real power gains.
Until they do I ignore them and their claims and challenge them to convince me.

Tom
Click to expand...

Could not have said it any better. Claims are easy. Real world data is what I need to see before I spend my hard won money on ANY performance product.
 
But at least it ain't full of epoxy.
I'm old school, I want to be able to fix it my self.
It's got to be better than the stock, HD's might be better, but to dear for me with shipping.
And this one as I see it, will be 'tunable' if you have the right skills, I could make one from the plans I got here, I'm an Electrical Instrument Fitter by trade.
But for the price, I'm going to get this one.
Was just waiting for a good review to come up, which it has.
Will be ordering one today.
 
I have one of the HD's Lightening cdi units and the coil, I can say that I honestly do not know if it adds any overall performance gains as far as speed or torque but I can say that the engine seems more responsive and seems to start easier, I've always been a big skeptic of a bunch of the gadgets and gizmos people come up with that promise to add speed and power to the china girls, I know that there are improvements to be made but it seems that better balance and the right port work along with a well tuned carb and goodflowing exhaust has made the biggest difference for me, if those things aaren't right no amount of bolt ons are gona make much difference if any at all.

Map
 
I got my Rocket CDI to day, and so first thing I did was pull it out of it's pill box.
I chased all the components and drew up a circuit diagram,
It is more or less the same circuit I found here that Ivan had drawn up, without the jumpers to give different settings.
http://motorbicycling.com/showthread.php?t=50044

But the resistors were all 1/4 Watt 5% tolerance bar one 15 ohm 1/2 watt but still a 5% tol.
The caps are 25v, when the original circuit recommended 35v.
and the charge cap 250v when the original recommended 275V.

I havn't tried it yet, but yes it is a bit cheaply made!
Don't know that I can recommend it,
But I'll be giving it a good test before I leave any feedback on EBay.
Still at least it isn't full of epoxy, and if it does work will be cheap to reproduce/repair.
 
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Theon said:
I got my Rocket CDI to day, and so first thing I did was pull it out of it's pill box.
I chased all the components and drew up a circuit diagram,
It is more or less the same circuit I found here that Ivan had drawn up, without the jumpers to give different settings.
http://motorbicycling.com/showthread.php?t=50044

But the resistors were all 1/4 Watt 5% tolerance bar one 15 ohm 1/2 watt but still a 5% tol.
The caps are 25v, when the original circuit recommended 35v.
and the charge cap 250v when the original recommended 275V.

I havn't tried it yet, but yes it is a bit cheaply made!
Don't know that I can recommend it,
But I'll be giving it a good test before I leave any feedback on EBay.
Still at least it isn't full of epoxy, and if it does work will be cheap to reproduce/repair.
Click to expand...


If yo have a tachometer and an accurate speedometer that will tell you if you are making any gains, loosing rpms or speed, things are staying the same, and then there is the seat of the pants test that could make it seem like acceleration is quicker or slower.

Ill be curious to hear about your results
 
Yes I have speedo and Taco, as well as temp.
I only have one of my motors back together and in a bike at the moment, The Soft tail.
She's not exactly Hi performance as yet, with the standard head, but she will be getting a shaved head soon enough, So I plan to test this thing out with a couple of different motor configurations, and will likely be doing a couple of little mods to the CDI at some stage also,
The timing caps are 3.2uf, so I'd like to experiment with them a little, as well as the resistors.
 
Today I bought a 1k ohm 10 turn pot and four .47uF caps.
So will have a fully adjustable CDI.
I just need to find a bank of micro switches.
 
Hows' it go?
Did you stick to the original Jag clone layout?
Do you mind me asking which SCR, capacitors and timing curve resistors you ended up using?
I have four 'worked' motors and only one 'performance' CDI, so was going to order some parts to build a few more.
 
Let me know how that CDI works out as well, I've been reading up a lot on the CDI mods lately since that's gonna be my next upgrade and I'm still going back and forth over buying one already made or making my own
 
Greg58 said:
This is mine, it is home made!


http://motorbicycling.com/album.php?albumid=259&pictureid=4458
Click to expand...

A little off topic here but I notice you have one of the engines that has the larger wider transfer port ramps in that pic, I have one of those cases myself, there is a huge difference in the size of the ramps in those cases, and the engine like that I have also has the crank that has the drilled counter weights nust like my three dax GenIV engines, have not run that engine yet but Im thinking it will be a good performer if I do nice port work on the jug and some piston work or just get a cut piston from Fred.

Just wondering where you bought that engine, mine came from LEB about three years ago.

Sorry didnt mean to jack this thread.

Map
 
MY cdi is a basic design without the timing curve, due to the components I used it does retard the timing at the top of the rpm range but hurts the low end some. I have found all the info I use from the " roll your own Cdi thread " on the forum . map the engine is a bgf so yes they likely came from the same factory but mine is a 48cc.
 
Hey, I make those. I thought people could benefit from them at a reasonable price. YOU SHOULD SEE MY EBAY FEEDBACK ITS 100%. My CDIs do what they say, people should feel free to come up with their own designs and build their own.

I'm working on some improvements all the time so when you order one, it will probably be a little better. But like I said, check my feedback. Cheers.
.wee.

mapbike said:
Found this on ebay earlier, I'm sure its been there for a while but I just seen it, sounds like the concept is the same as the Jaguar which has been proven to bee inferior to the HD's Lightening CDI.

Anyone else come across this one?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ROCKET-Raci...923?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4d18909f3b

http://youtu.be/r_pSSyddLRs
Click to expand...
 
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