Case of the Wispy Red/Blue spark... or TCI Blues

[saddlebum]

21 hours ago, RDawson said:

Just polish it up real nice, stick an HD sticker on it and trailer it around while sitting in an air conditioned truck. 🤣🤣🤣

There is a strict stipulation to this solution -----Bike must leak oil and shake at idle like a belly dancer.

Edited August 14, 2023 by saddlebum

[Marcarl]

2 hours ago, saddlebum said:

Trust me I can relate. Dutch blood does run in my veins.

You did say 'run' didn't you?

[Vickersguy]

1. Before we all get carried away with social commentary and what not,  no matter the entertainment value, I am reminded that this is a TECH forum.  In the interest of full disclosure I must also note for the record, that I am struggling with carburetor issues as well as the spark issue.  The correct vinyl tube has been delivered by the little brown truck of joy, along with the windshield washer repair hose barbs.  I made a template that bolts to the carb diaphragm cover with marks to indicate the correct fuel level in the float bowel.   I immediately discovered  the right rear carb drain hose used to check the float level is damaged and gas poured all over the motor from the hose when I cracked the drain screw open.   The right rear carb float appears to be stuck and the carb is flooded.  Front two are fine. They gotta come out AGAIN.  So right now I will share what little I have discovered from about 6 hours chasing TCI repair across a dozen forums. 
2. The blue and white spherical diodes ( 8 ) I was so happy with, may be bad even though they look OK.  They should be changed out regardless of how they look.
3. The round cylindrical capacitors, ( 17 ) which are now 40 years old, should be changed out.  They are well past their life expectancy even if they look OK. I'm not very happy about that because there are so many.
4. Doing most of the solder joints is not enough.  You really have to re-solder them all to be sure.
5. Changing out the 4 big transistors in the heat sinks is a good idea. 

From what I can find, if you do these 4 things, change out the blue/white diodes, change out the big transistors, replace the "barrel"  type capacitors, and re-solder the solder joints, about 80% of the TCI boxes come back on-line.  This is do-able.  Carbs first.  I will come back to this after the float issue is corrected.  I found a better pic of damaged blue/white diodes.  I also enlarged a pic of the xylol/acetone mix applied to the goo.  You can see it wrinkling up the goo under the green capacitor.  When it looks like that, it can easily be removed with a toothpick. Any remaining goo can then be wiped away with a q-tip.

 

[Vickersguy]

Note to SELF...  A properly tightened main jet looks exactly the same as one gently finger tight, that unscrews and falls to the bottom of the float bowl to jam the float. 

[Marcarl]

How much research did it take to figure that one out?

[saddlebum]

3 hours ago, Marcarl said:

How much research did it take to figure that one out

Probably required an ohmmeter to check resistance through the port. High ohms reading jet in place. Low ohms reading jet missing.

[Vickersguy]

Ahh... it was #4 carb and I noticed when the bike started pulling towards the right...  As this is a TECH forum, I thought I might share a special electrical trick I discovered...

  If you have no room left in your breaker panel in your garage or if you are sad because your air compressor or welder keeps tripping the breaker, here's how to fix it at almost no cost what so ever !!!!

 

TA DA !!!

 

 

 

[Vickersguy]

To defend myself, only slightly, three years ago before I abandoned the bike in the back of the garage I used a color-tune to set the pilot screws.  I had some confusion because I could get a blue color across a wide range of turns on the pilot screws, roughly 2 to 4 turns.  I guessed roughly three turns, more or less, and had inconclusive results.  Honestly, I don't remember going back and fine tuning the pilot screws afterwards.  I lost my notes as to where I set them and in the process of redoing the valves and prepping the bike for use, and trying to sort out multiple issues, the pilot screws were overlooked.  Their mal-adjustment came back with a bang when I first took the bike out last week.  You cannot troubleshoot a bad ignition system if your carbs foul two cylinders in only 12 miles.  Tomorrow I will check to see if the adjustments I made tonight have helped.  The reason I put the bike up is that not only did it run poorly but the top end was making weird screechy sounds.  Really loud and it sounded like something was really off.  When I checked the valves this year,  the valves were just like I set them and I was looking at the manual checking the conversion from mm to inches, when I spotted that the exhaust valve clearances in the manual were tighter than the intake valves. Really ?  Sound right to you ?  I will point out again as I did in another thread,  THE VALVE CLEARANCES IN THE '83 YAMAHA FACTORY MANUAL ARE IN FACT REVERSED.   Anyway, when you are going through a troubleshooting process you must eliminate variables.  Messing with multiple widgets at once just muddies the water.  The bike runs like garbage.  The only sane thing to do is to go back to the beginning and do the check list from square one.  Don't skip steps or jump to conclusions.  I would go on about adjusting carbs but there must be 100 threads here about adjusting carbs and it would be totally redundant.  In the meanwhile I will discuss my deep wisdom on the subject of bleeding brake systems....

Edited August 25, 2023 by Vickersguy
increase sarcasm levels and add snark ( spelling )

[saddlebum]

18 hours ago, Vickersguy said:

Ahh... it was #4 carb and I noticed when the bike started pulling towards the right...  As this is a TECH forum, I thought I might share a special electrical trick I discovered...

  If you have no room left in your breaker panel in your garage or if you are sad because your air compressor or welder keeps tripping the breaker, here's how to fix it at almost no cost what so ever !!!!

 

TA DA !!!

 

 

 

Ironically I rewired a house that actually makes that look safe in comparison. The owner used every thing from several strands of bell wire twisted together to 000 gauge welding cable. On top of that he  joined them together in sardine cans which he used as junction boxes. How he never burned the house down is beyond me.

[Vickersguy]

So the bike runs like garbage.  Marcal feels it's the carbs and I agree with him.  The spark still sucks, however.   In Post #28 back up the page I posted a picture of some bad blue/white diodes that were badly degraded next to my beautiful as-new looking diodes.  I read in a virago post on another board that even the good looking ones can be bad.  I picked the easiest diode to pull for a check and wadya know !  I had hoped they were good because they looked good.  I'm going to change them all. 

[Vickersguy]

Also, re-soldering the board will be done thoroughly. To quote the Virago guys...

 

Galvanic Corrosion
The space between unsealed connectors contains oil, moisture, fingerprints, dirt, ...etc. Also, being open to the world's contaminates, these things can seep and leach into the micro voids between the connector surfaces. Enter "Galvanic corrosion", where ionic interchange between disimilar metals acts like a corrosive battery, producing compounds that can interfere with good current flow, even making it act like a semiconductor diode. A good place for dielectric grease.

Inter metallic corrosion
Many brass and copper connectors are tin plated, and the fine border between those two dissimilar metals is closed to the outside elements. However, a strange long-term migration and intermixing of those metals occurs in that thin layer, leading to a form of inter metallic corrosion, which can also interfere with good current flow. Same can occur at the boundary of a substrate and a layer of solder, which can include boundary cracking of the solder. These types of degradation take many years to form, not an issue within normal life expectancy of typical vehicles. But, becomes real after 30 years or more.

We studied this back in the 80's, as part of determining the MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) of various electronics products. These pictures represent similar biopsy-like micro cross-sections of tin plated copper-clad printed circuit boards.



What all this means, is that with the age of our bikes, electrical problems can occur which defy normal diagnostic expectations. For example, you could have a failed wire connector which still shows appropriate voltage, but won't deliver current to a device, like a light bulb. This was my experience three years ago with a failed turn signal bulb. The contact at the bulb base showed voltage, but the bulb wouldn't light up. Maddening. Traced it to inter metallic corrosion within the contact face. Cleaned up the face and re-tinned it, works fine...

 

 

[Vickersguy]

Changed out the diodes, good news is I didn't kill the box.  Bad news, it's no better...

[Marcarl]

9 hours ago, Vickersguy said:

Changed out the diodes, good news is I didn't kill the box.  Bad news, it's no better...

What type of ignition leads did you use? Should be the wire type, not carbon.

[Vickersguy]

Original type, tin coated solid copper stranded, 19 strands.  OEM style.  Resistor caps and plugs.  I've done everything practical that can be done.  I have 9 coils here and I find the probability they are ALL bad, vanishingly small.  Ohmed out the entire ignition electrical system to be sure i have full voltage to the coils and the box.  Checked all the safety switches and so forth.  Re-soldered ALL the connections in the box to cover for cold solder joints.  Cleaned all the connectors. etc.etc.  My understanding is that the big 4 transistors switch off the ground path for the low voltage side of the coils.  This causes the spark when the low voltage field collapses.  If, in fact, there is some other pathway to ground, of relatively high resistance, there might be only a partial collapse of the field, resulting in a reduced energy spark.  That's my theory, anyway.  There may be some other diode on the board "leaking" or it's something else entirely.  Don't know.  I'm thinking an aftermarket TCI may be the only way out.  Can't afford one right now.  At the rate I'm going, the new tires I put on it will age out before I get this on the road.  Me too.  I'll be 70 next month.  After all the noise I heard over the ignitek box, I'm thinking this one might be the one I get.

 

https://www.cdireplacement.com/cdi-products/yamaha-xvz1200-venture-royal-igniter-tid14-17-26h-10-cdi-replacement/

 

[luvmy40]

Make sure you email Ignitech to be sure the CDI you get works for the '83. It is different(or was when I bought mine) than the '84 and up boxes. Something about the spark advance or vacuum boost if am remembering correctly.

BTW, the Ignitech module made all the difference in the world with my '83. I too had chased everything in the ignition system before I bought the Ignitech. I should have bought one from the beginning. Though, in the end, everything I replaced, probably did need replaced anyway.

[Vickersguy]

Hey there "40 !   The  Vacuum sensor is the difference, you are right.   I just spent some time going over the wire diagrams.  Some last minute checking needed, but hear me out on this.  A late model 84 to 90 boost sensor is only $5.88 on Pinwall/E-bay.  As far as I can tell, that is the only difference on the Mk-1 Ventures ignition system.  ( Also the location of the vacuum port )  Even the position of the wires on the plugs to the box seems the same.  Only the colors changed, not their locations on the plugs.  Therefore, I can use any box I wish as long as I use the correct boost sensor.  The only way that won't work is if the pickup coils in the case are somehow wire different internally, inside the coils. I need to check the ohms resistance on the earlier coils to the late coils in the manual.  I have a Ignition Box off an '86.  That bike didn't run worth a damn either.  It had ignition problems too.  I just opened up the '86 box and it has the same suspect blue/white diodes as well.  I think I'll swap out the diodes and get the $5 boost sensor and see it that will work.  My riding season is about shot anyway so what's to loose ?   So I order the new black box if it won't work.  I changed my mind.  I think I'll buy this box from the Netherlands instead of Igniteck.

Yamaha XVZ1200 Venture Royal igniter ignition module CDI TCI Box TID14-17, 26H-10 [CARI-YA-XVZ1200-VENTURE-ROYAL-TID14-17-26H-10 XVZ1200 CDI] - €349,00 : Carmo Electronics, The place for parts or electronics for your Motorbike Quad Scooter Car or Jetski

 

[Vickersguy]

I dunno, the price difference is huge, Carmo is $366 and the Igniteck is $150.  Whadya do to get the ignition dialed in on the Yamaha using the Igniteck ?  The thought of figuring out the advance curves and then loading them into the ignition system is, to say the least, daunting.   I'd hate to have a limp wrist-ed advance curve rather than a match to factory original.  All the talk I've heard about CD's required to load the curve and so forth is really off-putting.  Is there anyone on the board here who has the correct curves ?  I dunno...

[luvmy40]

14 hours ago, Vickersguy said:

I dunno, the price difference is huge, Carmo is $366 and the Igniteck is $150.  Whadya do to get the ignition dialed in on the Yamaha using the Igniteck ?  The thought of figuring out the advance curves and then loading them into the ignition system is, to say the least, daunting.   I'd hate to have a limp wrist-ed advance curve rather than a match to factory original.  All the talk I've heard about CD's required to load the curve and so forth is really off-putting.  Is there anyone on the board here who has the correct curves ?  I dunno...

I just sent Ignitech the year, make and model of my Venture and they sent me the CDI and, IIRC a pigtail. No set up. No programming. My '83 ran like a scalded dog with the Ignitech module.

[Vickersguy]

Thank you !  This is the information I needed.  There were quite a few older threads about refining the ign. curve.  I didn't know if that had been sorted out. 

[Vickersguy]

Got the ignition system installed and went for a ride.  Much better.  I need to dial in the mixture for perfection.  Got home and found the right front brake caliper leaked all over the place....   It's always sumpin..