I recently had a intermittant, then no spark condition and after replacing almost everythng via swaptronics without luck, I broke down and troubleshot the problem. It turned out one of the wires (red, power) on the back of the six pin had not been crimped properly and just pulled out but was still held in by the rubber boot so it was not obvious and made some contact until it didn't.

Why would I send it to someone I don't know?

Is there a website for Ingo, I G-Searched them and CDI in a number of arrangements but came up with nothing useful.

Just PM him?


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the bosch unit is very robust and very good.
a bad coil should not hurt the CD since its really jsut a capacitor discharging into a coil. you can have it rebuilt jsut for reliability but i think all that is replaced is the cap and a few SCR's for some more heavy duty ones if you will.

anyone have any specifics ofn this or is this one of those closely guarded secrets to stop DIY guys from spending a few bucks with a soldering iron over many hundreds at a specilist.

Do search here....all the information on the Bosch CDI is here.....what and how to replace stuff.

will do thanks

Update:
 

With the help of Lovely Mrs Saucy, I was able to get closer to an answer last night.
First things first. In the 4 years I've had the car, I've never fiddled with the CDI box/engine compartment electronics. I unplug the 6-pin and this little 3 pin was just hangin out...not plugged into anything...what's it to? (looks to have a blue and brown wire?)
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1414593763.jpg
Then I was able to test the key on voltage at the 6-pin, all good at 12.24 Volts, ruling out bad ignition, wiring or fuse from battery.

Then, with engine cranking (lovely assistant) I tested the VAC across the left-most pins on the connector. (dist pulse shielding and dist pulse input) I was able to get a variable reading while cranking between .900VAC and .955VAC...does this seem right?

CDI testing instructions I found said that if there is no pulse the dist pulse generator is bad. If there is pulse it's likely a bad CDI or coil. Well I just replaced the coil so don't think that's it. However, the instructions kindly left out what kind of VAC reading should be expected.

I believe I've narrowed to the CDI, other thoughts?

I believe the 3 prong plug is for an external voltage regulator.

Well...the car seemed to perform/run just fine without it all of my ownership.

Perhaps I'm living in a fool's paradise...SmileWavy

The measurements on the coil output of the Bosch CDI box are not valid without connecting the ignition coil itself. The output is one side of a capacitor and a high-impedance DVM will get confused. You need a proper load and then the output is nearly zero (unless the internal capacitor is damaged).

Be careful, with a bad internal capacitor this output can produce dangerously high voltage with enough current to hurt you.

Ingo