TOPIC:

As some of you may know already I once owned a new 1975 Z1-B which I had for about 4 years and sold. Fast forward about 39 some years and a ton of other bikes and I have a real desire to get another 900 or early 1000 cc Kawasaki. Unfortunately in that time frame much has changed regarding what people do to these bikes to make them more dependable and trustworthy although I never had any problems with the one I owned. Age takes a toll on anyone and anything, but I keep reading about Z and KZ owners converting to something called Dyna S ignition systems on their bikes. My question is, is this something a lot of owners do just to get away from the point/condenser ignition systems, or is there a real benefit to the Dyna S system such as increasing performance, reliability, etc.? It would seem there are a couple of ways of going about these conversions such as buying a "basic" system without the coils and buying a system with the coils. Either way is pricey, but I would assume getting the system with the coils would be best correct? Lastly, is this a difficult conversion or is it pretty straight forward? My gut tells me to leave well enough alone and leave the standard ignition system in place, but I am intrigued by the Dyna S setup. Thanks for any help on this.
Rick H.

The Dyna S is a good system and will work with stock coils. They like anything can fail over time. I keep my points setup as a backup.
Steve

Do you already have a bike, or asking in advance of getting a bike?

Starting in 1979 Kz's started getting electronic ignitions. The Dyna S can be put on those bikes as well as the points bikes, but the Dyna S will need different coils than the Kz electronic ignition coils.

With points, if you know you have good coils, like Steve said, you can just use the points coils with the Dyna S.

The Dyna S is by far the most popular aftermarket replacement ignition on Kz's. But the factory electronic ignition is better in my opinion. The problem is they are 40 years old. Dyna is a reputable company, so it's safe to deal with them.

The conversion is pretty straight forward, but every now and then someone will report the Dyna S timing plate doesn't have enough adjust-ability to time the bike perfectly, so they often had to elongate the adjustment slots. Those may have only been on the earlier generation of the Dyna S. The current Dyna S can be identified by pickups that are not as tall, and there is usually a blue sticker on one of them.

The Accent ELZ2Coil is an electronic ignition System for classic Japanese bikes made in Germany.
It works with stock and aftermaket 3 ohm coils. It has an auto off feature (3 sec. off no idle) and includes an LED (the small red dot toward the middle of the board in the photos below) for static timing (F mark) and longer adjustment slots. Price is 170 Euro.





www.accent-electronic.com/ELZ2Coil.html
www.dotheton.com/forum/index.php?topic=28160.30
www.fourever-classic-parts.de/index.php?...ticle&id=9&Itemid=12
www.oldjapanesebikes.com/blog/2012/07/30...nic-ignition-system/

Points are proven and close to foolproof. Only real justification to switch in my opinion is if you plan to put a lot of miles on the bike. If that's the case the lower maintenance of an electronic system may be beneficial.

Nessism wrote: Points are proven and close to foolproof. Only real justification to switch in my opinion is if you plan to put a lot of miles on the bike. If that's the case the lower maintenance of an electronic system may be beneficial.

I agree, except that decent points are getting hard to find. My one buddy has a collection of old Hondas using points and he just has one story after another of reputable sellers selling what he believes are knockoff/counterfeit points. He showed me some points where the pivot shaft rode in an elongated hole. The points could misalign so much that they would either never close or never open.

To answer a few questions, no, I do not have the bike yet. Still trying to close a deal on a 1977 KZ 1000. So what I am doing in the meantime is trying to rapidly educate myself on several areas that seem important to me. This would include the ignition system conversion to an electronic setup. I did cut my teeth on standard dual point setups years ago, but haven't fooled with them much over the last 20+ years with most manufacturers going pointless. I never felt under-equipped with a point system years ago, but times change and if something looks like a winner and worth the expense, why not make the change? I do know that just from this website much has been said about ignition coils and making sure they are the correct ohm value for the Dyna S conversion. With that in mind, I gather the standard OEM coils will work with the Dyna S system, but then I read where the spark plugs, wires and end caps can all have a negative effect on the performance of the system. It all sounds a little complex as I don't recall ever having these types of issues back in the day. I don't recall ever having to worry about suppression wires or plugs on a motorcycle, but a car was something else for radio interference. Ohm value of a coil was also something else we didn't concern ourselves with. If a coil went bad you just went to the dealer and bought another one to replace it with, save for the fact today you have to contend with Chicom knock off stuff. So much to catch up on....thanks for the replies.

Rick H.

It appears that most aftermarket systems aimed at KZ bikes and old 80s bikes use the same inductive wasted spark system. But the timing is measured with a Hall effect sensor and the power is switched with modern MOSFET transistors. This means that the primary coil resistance is somewhere between 3 ohms and 5 ohms.
Some of the issues with switching to an aftermarket system are a steady voltage supply to the units. It's common for older wiring looms to have some intermittent connections affected by corrosion. Every time there's a power flicker, your digital system will reset which can give some weird behaviour. More simple, pure analog systems like Dyna-S are not affected as they don't have the advance curve stored on a microprocessor.

For many years I used a pair of Vellemann ignition amplifiers hooked up to my points as a sort of halfway house measure.
The idea is that the points don't deal with the large currents across the coils, instead they just switch these transistors. This means they tend to wear more slowly.
It also meant that if the ignition amplifiers failed, I could just unplug them and ride home on points.

I got fed up with resetting points regularly, so I used a Dyna-S. However I found that these systems would fail after a few years and also used a huge amount of electrical power.
Eventually I designed an igniter to work with the pickups used in the KZ spectre model. No issues with this set-up yet.

For sure get rid of the points. That was the biggest pain of all riding back in 1978. Even if points cam was lubed, points would close up. I don't think I ever rode more than 500 miles without attention of some kind to the points. This was on my 1978 KZ650 bought new. Had enough of that crap by 1979 and put in a Dyna-III which still works to this day. I have never had charging issues with this KZ650, but another with the Dyna-S charges real weak.