ET: Engine (Twin) Has Anyone Ever Bench Tested a B-TH Electronic Mag With Coils

[CarlHungness]

I have been using Naraku Coils for the past few years on my BT-h magnets.
I think the machine starts easier and at a lower spin.
Ignition coil Naraku Racing V.2 high output - 2-pin
Also very sympathetically priced

I just ordered a pair from eBay, will take a week to get here and will try the B-TH and the Naraku and will report back on performance. Thanks for the tip. Will have to write to B-TH and see what they say about them.

 

[oexing]

Fat sparks - super high voltage sparks - I´d hate sparks that appear weak judging from the sound they make. A healthy loud crack is what I´d call high energy and if this is not so - well, thanks, electronic or not.
I remember when CDI sets came into fashion not all engines were happy with them. Seemed in engines with less perfectly spread mixture in cylinder the very short impulse CDI spark could not find a good mixture at all times for a nice run. With mag and coil-capacitor-breaker or battery-coil ignition the coil-capacitor combination will show a strong high voltage spike PLUS a length of smaller spikes of spark burn time on an oscilloscope. So this helps for igniting mixture a lot.
Short spark CDI ignition effect can be helped by setting the plug gap to more than common numbers but this seems to be discouraged by some manufacturers for easing life of electronics - ???
So better get a nice distributor on the Vincent with coil ignition - when you got decent power from Alton and all.
For a challenge - and to be different - I got some Vertex/Ronco magnetos for their extra fat sparks, see Youtube link below, finger spun !
But that mod is a big job to go on Vincents , so no real proposition for most here.

Vic
Ronco mag

 

[CarlHungness]

Fat sparks - super high voltage sparks - I´d hate sparks that appear weak judging from the sound they make. A healthy loud crack is what I´d call high energy and if this is not so - well, thanks, electronic or not.
I remember when CDI sets came into fashion not all engines were happy with them. Seemed in engines with less perfectly spread mixture in cylinder the very short impulse CDI spark could not find a good mixture at all times for a nice run. With mag and coil-capacitor-breaker or battery-coil ignition the coil-capacitor combination will show a strong high voltage spike PLUS a length of smaller spikes of spark burn time on an oscilloscope. So this helps for igniting mixture a lot.
Short spark CDI ignition effect can be helped by setting the plug gap to more than common numbers but this seems to be discouraged by some manufacturers for easing life of electronics - ???
So better get a nice distributor on the Vincent with coil ignition - when you got decent power from Alton and all.
For a challenge - and to be different - I got some Vertex/Ronco magnetos for their extra fat sparks, see Youtube link below, finger spun !
But that mod is a big job to go on Vincents , so no real proposition for most here.

Vic
Ronco mag

View attachment 59686

View attachment 59687

Nice video showing fat sparks and the installations you have done of course look clean. Don't know how you keep from burning plug wires on the bottom photo which shows them tucked into the fins. One of my plug wires burned through as it ran up the #2 cylinder. Cannot tell how you've mounted each unit, but I'm pretty capable when it comes to machining, welding and general fabrication, so would like to know what you've done. Would also like to know your name if possible, all is see is Oexing and as you may know the journalist in me screams when I see non-de-plumes (for years!!) and it's nice to address someone with their proper name. As an editor I banned non-de-plumes but VOC rules allow them much to my chagrin.

 

[oexing]

Carl, I fully agree with your view on nom-de-plumes, so yes, I try to find out Christian names in profiles but rarely succeed . Seems there is a certain kind of paranoia in some forums about privacy or maybe data protection to fight bike thefts. When you look up my postings I place my name at the end of every posting, Vic - from Victor.
The Ronco is clamped to the front of engine with four M 5 Allen bolts and strips of stainless, a bit like Laverda 750 dynamos, see first photo above. The bolts will have Loctite sealing as some go into the filter cavity. The diameter of the Ronco is quite large so some machining of engine case is required, again see first picture with no homemade tufnol cover on. So then the oil filter cap gets quite close to the machined faces. I wanted an o-ring to go with the filter cap, so made an adapter screwed into the original thread and reduced the new metric thread for a nice o-ring recess and special cap. Just some hours, not too complicated.
The Ronco we get from VW beetle fire pump engines via Ebay are four cylinder types. I had a few failed experiments , trying to have just two sparks at Vincent timings, cam modified in the mag certainly. But in the end I surrendered to 4 sparks as I got 4 or no sparks at all in my efforts. So two sparks are earthed under the tufnol cap and two go to the plugs.
I don´t worry about plug wires round the cylinder base, silicon ignition wires and cylinders will not have more than 100 degrees C down there, close to the engine case.
Typical car distributors or these mags don´t suffer from side loads onto the drive shaft but in our case with gear drive in the timing side I added a ball bearing to the drive end of the Ronco - don´t ask me about details. At my age I seem to forget things within a few weeks as I go along with my projects and don´t care much about remembering how I did it in the end. Often I come up with more than one idea while trying to find a nice construction and after some time gone I no longer remember which idea I actually picked - - - oh dear . . .
Funny thing with these Ronco / Vertex /Scintilla mags, they got an ATD in the drive, but no springs, there is a selection of brass flyweights driving the rotor. So you select flyweights for tuning the advance curves to your likings ! I guess this was a Swiss designer coming up with such an idea.
Incidentally, Oexing was the more than 1000 years old name of my home town - till in 1933 Hitler took over and no longer Oexing - was incorporated with the next town close by.
Anyway, in case you get bored, just ask for details, my two B Raps will not be completed for some time still. Bits and pieces in shelves around the premises for looking up how I did it then . . .

Vic

earth brass segments at 5 and 11 o´clock:

 

[Nigel Spaxman]

I have a few of those Vertex mags in a box. They came from VW industrial engines we used to use at work. Those were converted to coil ignition. I don't know what I will do with them. I thought maybe someone who liked VWs would want them. Maybe they belong on a Vincent. I should take one apart just to see what's inside.

 

[oexing]

I wonder why somebody would want to convert to coil ignition. There can be a duff mag coil inside but spares are available . And 4 , 6 or 8 cylinder types avaliable too. When going for coil ignition a standard distributor for VW is easy.

Vic

 

[Nigel Spaxman]

The reason some of the industrial VWs were built with the mag is so that you could hand crank start them and then no battery was required. Most people prefered electric start, then there was a battery anyway so coil ignition was probably better.

 

[oexing]

Yes, I know, typical fire department or army equipment. But why would one convert the mags for coil ignition ? Easy to just put a common distributor on the Beetle engine.

Vic

 

[CarlHungness]

Carl, I fully agree with your view on nom-de-plumes, so yes, I try to find out Christian names in profiles but rarely succeed . Seems there is a certain kind of paranoia in some forums about privacy or maybe data protection to fight bike thefts. When you look up my postings I place my name at the end of every posting, Vic - from Victor.
The Ronco is clamped to the front of engine with four M 5 Allen bolts and strips of stainless, a bit like Laverda 750 dynamos, see first photo above. The bolts will have Loctite sealing as some go into the filter cavity. The diameter of the Ronco is quite large so some machining of engine case is required, again see first picture with no homemade tufnol cover on. So then the oil filter cap gets quite close to the machined faces. I wanted an o-ring to go with the filter cap, so made an adapter screwed into the original thread and reduced the new metric thread for a nice o-ring recess and special cap. Just some hours, not too complicated.
The Ronco we get from VW beetle fire pump engines via Ebay are four cylinder types. I had a few failed experiments , trying to have just two sparks at Vincent timings, cam modified in the mag certainly. But in the end I surrendered to 4 sparks as I got 4 or no sparks at all in my efforts. So two sparks are earthed under the tufnol cap and two go to the plugs.
I don´t worry about plug wires round the cylinder base, silicon ignition wires and cylinders will not have more than 100 degrees C down there, close to the engine case.
Typical car distributors or these mags don´t suffer from side loads onto the drive shaft but in our case with gear drive in the timing side I added a ball bearing to the drive end of the Ronco - don´t ask me about details. At my age I seem to forget things within a few weeks as I go along with my projects and don´t care much about remembering how I did it in the end. Often I come up with more than one idea while trying to find a nice construction and after some time gone I no longer remember which idea I actually picked - - - oh dear . . .
Funny thing with these Ronco / Vertex /Scintilla mags, they got an ATD in the drive, but no springs, there is a selection of brass flyweights driving the rotor. So you select flyweights for tuning the advance curves to your likings ! I guess this was a Swiss designer coming up with such an idea.
Incidentally, Oexing was the more than 1000 years old name of my home town - till in 1933 Hitler took over and no longer Oexing - was incorporated with the next town close by.
Anyway, in case you get bored, just ask for details, my two B Raps will not be completed for some time still. Bits and pieces in shelves around the premises for looking up how I did it then . . .

Vic

View attachment 59688

earth brass segments at 5 and 11 o´clock:
View attachment 59689

Just fabulous work and I for one would like clone one of your installations.

 

[oexing]

Carl,
you can have all info that you like to get, no patents pending here ! Question is how much time you accept to invest in that mod, at your age ??
Sorry, not meant to be offensive, in one month I will be 70 too - old farts then , both of us . . .
But then, what´s the average age of Vincent owners in 2023 ??

Vic