EME Electronic Ignition

[bbelk]

I put an Omega on my R/90 six years and five back tires ago. (Airhead odometer) No problems except once when I used the alternator bolt to find TDC when setting the valves and mucked up the timing. Easy fix once I figured it out. It looks fragile and all of its magic parts are under the front cover where its hot, but so far so good.

I put a Boyer on my R65 last spring and 2,500 miles ago. It took some creative work with a grinder getting it in, but has worked perfectly since.

In both cases, I was having a problem getting tuned with the old points, coil, and plug wires so following the advice of Stephen Bottcher, who was selling Omega at the time, I changed the coils and plug wires along with the new ignitions. I will never know what solved my poor tune, but both bikes ran much better after the changes.

[Foxy]

Thanks Chas,
I am talking to the Sachse people re fitting there pick up/trigger unit to the EME control unit, will let you know outcome.

[Foxy]

They are not compatable

[Blapper]

Jim cray fits Boyers to all his bikes......some people hate them, but as they have been in production since 1973, there are a few of them around to have gone wrong. They used to misbehave under low voltage conditions but I think that has been fixed.
check requirements for coil resistance before fitting an ignition, and check to see whether ot not resistor plug caps are required.

I would not fit an electronic ignition whose black box is fitted inside an engine

Not any more he doesn't, and further more, if you even say the word 'Boyer' in his workshop, he will chuck you out. Boyer has worked well on old British bikes of mine, but has reliability issues on beemers.

[Rob Frankham]

Crank mounted ignitions systems seem good in principle but as long as the timing chain is in good condition, they make very little difference. BMW specifies and accuracy of +/-3 degrees for ignition timing and the accuracy achievable with camshaft driven ignition systems is well within that.

Rob

[chasbmw]

Just a reminder for everyone to check the resistance of all the components in the system.

I have had issues with NGK plug caps that don’t conduct any spark, which may well have blown out a Dyna Mini coil, another Dyna Mini that failed, I fitted PVL coils, but got the part nos wrong so the low resistance coils melted within a very short period, and have found resistor spark plugs that are 1/2 the advertised resistance. So get your multimeter out and check out every component before you fit them.

[r67boxer]

I use the Silent Hektik ignition on one bike and a Sachse ignition on the other.

Both are crank mounted and both have a variety of ignition curves to suit my dual plugged bikes. Both are assembled in Germany, the SH ignition uses better quality fittings and a Hall trigger, the Sachse unit uses a light beam trigger, because of the possibility of magnetic fields from the alternator causing problems with a hall sensor. The Sachse unit is easier to set up, using a Led light to set the trigger at TDC.

My Sachse ignition has worked fine for about 3 years and 15k miles.

Sorry to hijack... this is valuable stuff!

I too am looking at upgrading to electronic ignition on my R100s. I believe my issue is bad set of points or ATU unit... I'd be happy to not adjust points ever again and I don't want to risk another bad ATU as a new after market solution will be cheaper and work.

I was directed to a crank mounted system and have been trying to workout which is best, but I am concerned about their reliability as some of the products don't appear to be robust in construction/packaging so I'm sceptical they'd last long with the heat produced by an airhead the engine. I almost went for the Boyer system until my enlightenment on the crank systems, but now thinking that perhaps this lower tech option might be the most reliable. Just wonder why BMW never fitted a crank mounted ignition system from the start?

Had a look at the Omega unit and that looks very backyard and I have read about units failing...so I am now thinking of sticking with the Boyer and hope my cam shaft isn't bent or that the two sensors will cancel out the run off.

I installed the Enduralast EDL-312 electronic ignition system on my '82 R100T. It's a is a crank mounted electronic optical trigger and electronic ignition advance unit. EME sells different EDL kits for airheads from '70-'95. My R100T was dual plugged and I installed new coils. Setup was relatively easy with really good support from EME. Everything worked save for the tachometer. After some fiddling (and an assessment from Shail's BMW of Langley BC) it was determined that the module was faulty. EME sent another no-charge - everything now works as it should.

Kevin

[jackonz]

I have a Boyer system on my R80/7 and it was on the bike when I got it, it has one coil to feed both cylinders and NGK resistor plug caps, only issue I had was after the refurbishment where the engine ran on with the ignition off, with Advice from Rob and consulting the manual I had it sorted, the black box for it is under the tank strapped to the frame with cable ties.

I did see on YouTube a while back someone fitting a system that had a Crank mounted pickup and he left the original points in place, furthermore by changing one wire he could revert back to a points system if the electronic unit failed, interestingly the black box for this was small and was double sided taped to the Voltage Regulator.

I do like the idea of a crank mounted system as it takes away the errors a cam system may have with a worn timing chain.

If I find the YouTube link I will post it here.