Hey all,
Jumping in on this old thread here. Regarding 'black box' repair, I'm just wondering if anyone has had any further progress with their efforts? I just posted a WTB for another unit, as mine has apparently given up the ghost. But, in reading this thread it has me thinking. I know next to nothing about solid-state circuitry......but I do a LOT of point-to-point type wiring building old 'Vacuum Tube' amplifiers. I can 'fix' a PC board.....as long as I know what to replace. But, in my limited experience with something like this...... my first thought would have been that it would have been a 'logic' problem as a result of a failure in the IC chip. I guess I have an 'early' module......as it's off my '81 Special and seems to be the 'less complicated' version. My board appears to have 4 transistors, the IC chip, and what looks to be a regulator (the 3-legged 'big' transistor with the heat-sink attached)? I guess at this point I'm wondering if anyone has 'reverse-engineered' one of these, come up with some currently available replacement chips, transistors, or that regulator? Even a schematic would be REALLY helpful. I'm going to replace my 4 diodes..... just cuz it's an 'easy' job. Do I think it will 'fix' my unit?.......'hmmmm....not really sure about that.' But, we'll see. In the mean time, if anyone has any updates on this, I'd like to know about 'em. BTW, my unit would start the bike....and allow it to idle, but as soon as any attempt was made to increase RPM the engine would start to break up badly, back-fire out the carbs.....and even shut down altogether. If the throttle was backed off, it would start to smooth out and idle again. But, it fouled out a new set of plugs in about 3 minutes of run-time. Replacing the box with a known good unit made the engine run like the proverbial 'raped-ape' (has anyone ever seen a raped ape run I wonder????). Anyway.... I'd LOVE to fix my old module.....or even do something creative like apply an old automotive ignition module to the bike. Thanks for the comments guys!! GREAT thread!! Tom D.