As you can see in the photo above, the black wire has a yellow band around it indicating that you are supposed to put that black wire in the yellow receptacle in the bike’s wiring harness. The same goes for the white wire with the blue band around it. However, these colored bands were on the wrong wires. The white wire should have the yellow band and the black wire the blue band. Does that make sense? I noticed the mistake when I was testing the spark on my number three cylinder. When I manually turned the rotor and landed on the “F” mark on points 1-4 my number 3 cylinder spark plug fired. This was remedied when I swapped the black and white wires from the Dyna to my wiring harness. Whatever…. it was an easy fix. No worries. Now onto the timing.

My little DIY static timing light worked perfectly. I’ll try to describe the process as best as I can and hopefully better than what is written on the SOHC forums.

My little light was made with two wires. I connected the positive wire to the white bullet connector of the Dyna that was connected to the main wiring harness. The ground wire of the light was connected the the frame of the bike. I chose the the metal from the clutch cable holder. With the three main screws holding the Dyna slightly loosened I grabbed a wrench and slowly turned the crank until the light was illuminated. Then I noted at what point the light turned on.

On normal points you want the light to come on when the “F” is aligned with the notch on the engine case. The Dyna, however, wants us to align the notch to the advanced timing marks which are the two little lines to the right of the 1•4. So the idea is, with the three main screws loosened, you are able to turn the whole Dyna rotor to compensate if your notch does not line up correctly. I not only had to turn the whole Dyna as far counterclockwise as possible I also had to reposition the individual pickups.

Each pickup has two tiny black allen head bolts on either side, loosening these tiny bolts allows for a few degrees of adjustment. I had to rotate these as far counterclockwise as possible to get the correct timing. One thing I should mention… the tiny bolts aren’t metric. Luckily the Dyna-S comes with an allen wrench, but it would have been nice if I could turn those bolts with my allen wrench kit, instead of having this tiny tool to keep track of in my toolbox.

They say the Dyna is great for cold starts, and most likely will start on the first kick every time. After the timing was statically done (induction timing to be done later) I kicked the bike and it rumbled to life for a second. On the second kick it was on for good. Impressive, considering the bike hadn’t been started in three weeks. The Dyna produces a truly hot thick spark, I’m very happy with it. Goodbye points…

Last week I removed the points plate from the advance assembly but didn’t unhook it from the wiring harness. The procedure is fairly easy and a matter of simply pulling the blue and yellow wires from the harness.

Here is a pic of my old points plate removed from the wiring harness. It’s still works and I’m going to keep it just in case things don’t work out with the Dyna-S.

Since I was down there pulling wire, I decided to replace the right side engine case bolts that held the points plate wire in place. The bolts were frozen and pretty chewed up but the metal tabs that held the wire in place were still good.

Brand spankin new Dyna-S.

After removing the spark advance assembly, I had to remove the points cam by twisting to the the right and pulling.

Next, I had to slip on the black magnet cylinder thingy. In order for it to sit perfectly in the advance assembly the spring mechanisms must be pulled out so the black magnet cylinder slides down and engages with the notches

I lined up the number “1″ with points 1-4 on the advance assembly.

Slide the Dyna rotor over it and bolt down with some shiny new stainless steel allen head bolts.

Then I slid out the rubber grommet from the old points wire.

Split it with a razor blade.

Placed it on the Dyna-S cable and in the slot in the engine case.

Ran the the cable through new stainless steel allen bolts.

White wire goes into the blue, black goes into the yellow. The red wire is spliced into the 12v brake light wire. I’ll post more pics of the splicing next weekend. The next post will cover static timing the Dyna.

My CB550′s breaker points need to be adjusted before summer riding. I started this morning but didn’t get to finish due to lunch and a light drizzle outside. What I did discover was a small typo in the Clymer Repair Manual. The point gap is indicated as .016 inches which translates to .4mm, but evidently this basic math has eluded Clymer’s copy editors. Hopefully their 21st edition will reflect an accurate metric conversion. I tried to find a contact email address for the publishers to let them know, but my google-fu skills must be lacking this morning. I can’t seem to find one.

More on this tomorrow.

According to the Clymer manual there was supposed to be a gasket between the cover and the housing. I didn’t find one. What I did find was that someone in the last 30 years had been in here and stripped all the points adjustment screws. It was time to finally break out my impact driver that I have been dying to use.

I can’t say that I fully understand the reasoning behind correctly gapping the points, but I am very good at following directions and apart from taking out the stripped screws it was an easy job.

Even with a variety of bits and an impact driver I still had trouble getting these out.

But I didn’t give up.

I replaced about four screws with new ones I picked up at my local hardware store.

The Clymer manual states the gap between the points should be .03mm – .04mm. I used my spark plug gap tool and found a gauge that was .035. I did noticed that one of the points does need to be either replaced or filed down. The points for 2-3 are uneven. Gapped correctly on front side but not rear.

I didn’t bother putting the phillips head screws back in. I got some 6mm allen head bolts and put those in instead. Eventually, when I start pulling stuff off the engine to polish, I’ll get a allen bolt set for the whole bike. These people have a set that is already polished. http://www.stainlesscycle.com/catalog/

For now, I don’t mind spending .75 cents to replace a few bolts here and there.