I agree, the ground is now on its own terminal and has a substantial jumper to the mags frame. The earlier units had the small fragile wires soldered directly from the coil to the frame.
The newer mags are being sold along with the older models. You can recognize them by having only black and blue wires, the aforementioned ground jumper and the covering over the windings is white. I bought one today for $10 shipped.
Yep.
The new mags don't have a secondary coil for aux power, hence no useless white wire and split ground.
I haven't actually pulled both apart and looked but the new mags either have a bit fatter wire, or more of it.
Just remember that a magneto is just a coil to make a pulse from a spinning magnet.
Crap magnet, crap spark, and yes permanent earth magnets loose their magnetism, sometimes in short order.
I had a new kit with a magnet that would barley hold it's on weight on the side of metal filing cabinet.
Even with replacing stock wiring and using a really good plug the thing couldn't maintain a good timed sparked.
If it's a good strong magnet it should be a pain to get the magneto mounted because of magnet pull.
I'm talking hard to get the first bolt in, and then even harder to align the mag with the other bolts to keep the same air gap between the magneto coil and magnet, which has to be right for the most output to the CDI.
The bottom line here is you want the biggest damn spark arc in your cylinder as you can get, and that starts with the spinning magnet which also sets the spark timing.
I don't dick around with that, I make sure I get every milliamp the coil will make to the CDI by replacing the stock wiring and using an Iridium spark plug.
It's amazing the big spark with the big gap those plugs have even with a not really strong magnet.