Leaderboard

OK, not my first rodeo. I've done the checks, swapped coils ( Have 9 on the bench to pick from ) checked the grounds, voltages, pressure sensor, pick-up coils, etc. all seem OK. All spade connectors are clean and tight on all the circuits. Kill switch, side stand switch etc. OK. New plugs and plug wires. I'm down to the TCI box. To my horror the pics from the threads relevant to TCI repair, seem to be gone. I think I want to try the repair, change out the diodes and probably some caps and the power transistors. Without those pics I will not know what is what. I did the repairs of the instrument cluster board and had great success. The relevant observations: The bike ( '83 ) has a perfect idle, even heat on all pipes but stumbles and looses power on the road. Spark is barely visible in the shop and when cranking in the shop, the first and sometimes the second spark are hot and bright. By the third revolution it has degraded back to wispy red/blue. Even with a fully charged new battery and two battery chargers on the battery, to prevent voltage drop, the spark degrades. Some help with pics and information would be awesome as I can't go forward without them. That means I can come up with $20 for diodes but the Igntech is kinda out of reach even though it is still available.

Finally making some progress on the '88. She has had lots of plastic repair with Plastex, great product. She has been painted with the finest Duplicolor paint and clearcoat that Autozone had available, It has been painted with a really good $29.00 Harbour Freight HPLV paint gun. Three coats each. I do have a few electrical problems that are holding me up. The Pass System powers up, but that is all. (error code E2) I found this, ( ) and will begin working on it soon. The wind picked up once I started painting, go figure, got a little trash in the paint but I think it came out alright. The pictures have a lot of dust but that came after it cured and will come right off.

Made it home, we had great time riding and getting to see everyone.

Personally I prefer the OEM carb setup. For one thing with four carbs you can balance the engine better which is specially nice if your compression between cylinders vary. With a single carb you cannot, you can only attain a general adjustment across the board. If a carb fails you can still run on the other three to get somewhere other than the side of the road. Finally looking at the setup you would also reduce air volume though I guess air velocity would increase, maybe. There is a reason why in the muscle car hay day we replaced 2 barrel carbs with four barrel or even 6 packs. JMHO.

Finished the last checks. The electrical system, outside the black box, is fine. Good voltage, good grounds, 1.6 ohms resistance from the + battery lead to the input of the box. I have 9 coils to work with and they all ohm out the same plus/minus an ohm or two. Bike idles like a dream but once the situation in the cylinder changes everything goes sideways. Next, I have to get out the box. I think I want a zipper on the fairing for this nonsense. I have the diodes and power npn transistors ( ST901T ) en route. A fading spark could mean a bad capacitor. I may be changing out some if I can find replacements. I don't know if I can check caps with an oscilloscope. Have to check with my ham radio electrical buddy. Here's a link to the data the XJ yamaha guys dug up on their black boxes that used the same transistor we have in the early Venture boxes. https://www.xjcd.org/TCI_transistors

Well, I missed it. Thanks Uncledj for the offer to help