Ignitech TCIP4 sudden failure

L

laverda180

Junior member
Location
Amberley, New Zealand
my 180 series 2 runs an Ignitech with Sachse pickup since a few years now and basically very pleased, but the unit has just failed a second time. This time no sparks to cylinder 1 and 3, last time no sparks any cylinder. Occurs without warning. First time Ignitech repaired the unit stating it had an unspecified manufacturing fault. Still I am very pleased, but now becoming wary. Has anyone else experienced sudden failures of the TCIP4 unit resolved simply by Ignitech repairing / replacing the unit or user simply fitting a new one? Are they perhaps not very robust?
 
Hello, I bought a TCIP4 in 2014. My bike was laid up for about six months last year.

When I put it back together, it would only run on one cylinder. After some swapping bits around, for a process of elimination, I discontected the Ignitech and connected the original ignition back up. It fired up pretty much first touch of the button, runs fine, I've been on a few rides.

I connected up a laptop to the Ignitech, it only shows that it is seeing two pickups, and it says 'no signal'. It also says 'programme device OK'. I tried reloading programmes into it, but it did not make any difference.

I don't get how it went faulty just sitting there doing nothing for six months.

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Chappo said:
I connected up a laptop to the Ignitech, it only shows that it is seeing two pickups, and it says 'no signal'. It also says 'programme device OK'. I tried reloading programmes into it, but it did not make any difference.

I don't get how it went faulty just sitting there doing nothing for six months.
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Ignitech software will only show two pickups as it is only set up with two pickup inputs
somehow in the software they designate one pickup as Number 1 cylinder being the trigger you use to time the system and then they split the second pickup to fire both cylinders 2 and 3

you still using the Inductive triggers ?
if it is a Hall Effect system you could send it to me to test as am just about finished building a 120 Jota that I will throw in my test bench to run up and tune before it goes back to its owner
no use sending it though if still using Inductive triggers
 
Thanks all. First a correction it is a hall device with hall triggers. Bike was a year in storage / shipping as I relocated to NZ. Upon arrival started and ran beautifully in garage prior being taken for compliance and registration. Once that was done, reg plate fitted, jacket, helmet on. Won’t start, Ignitech appears to have failed. Root cause is reg plate, helmet or jacket 😉!

So far tests on stator, battery and regulator are fine. No faults found with wiring so about to install Sachse to get bike going but won’t run it seriously with Sachse as I know none of the curves are fully good for my tune.

Red, thanks, I will send unit to you, thanks also for your offline support.
 
I suppose one issue with Ignitech is that it's easy to bugger up the software if you're a bit unfamiliar with its foibles.

A couple of years ago I had to sort out an Ignitech that I'd installed on a bloke's race bike. He reckoned the thing had gone tits up for no reason. He assumed it had fried its brain because it wasn't making any sparks at all. It was a 2-cylinder Honda 125 (bored out to about 160 I think). It was a bloody fast little bike. After plugging my laptop in to check the program, it took about 10 seconds to diagnose the problem. Somehow during his tweaking of the advance map, he'd inadvertently changed the motorcycle type on the "Bike" tab from "Special setting" to "Yamaha R6". I changed it back and it fired up straight away. I guess the Ignitech was expecting a different signal from the pickups. It couldn't make sense of the inputs it was getting so it did nothing.
 
In Finland we have had some Ignitech units eventually to fail.
I have the original BTZ in place as a spare system, just need to swap the connectors.
Some have another programmed and tested spare Ignitech unit.
I think flexible fastening is very important and secondly keeping water and humidity off from the Ignitech unit connector.

-Jouni
 
There was two weaknesses keeping the BTZ unit as spare for Ignitech:
1. Needs two different connectors for the wiring set, as BTZ and Ignitech have different connectors. Currently I have an adapter cable.
2. In this system considering both units having same basic advance setting on the pickups, If I recall correct I needed to set basic advance on the Ignitech for -2 degrees. This causes the Ignitech to calculate advance, which actually means somewhat more inaccure timing. This can be zeroed by using different advance setting on the pickups, but then this needs to be either documented well or marked on the pickups, and of course the pickups need to be adjusted again when changing to the spare system, which probably happens at night when it rains according to Murphy's law.
 
Dellortoman said:
Somehow during his tweaking of the advance map, he'd inadvertently changed the motorcycle type on the "Bike" tab from "Special setting" to "Yamaha R6"
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Thanks for the info Cam, I will check this on mine.

MotoJouni said:
I have the original BTZ in place as a spare system, just need to swap the connectors.
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I have the same, easy to swap back.

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MotoJouni said:
I think flexible fastening is very important and secondly keeping water and humidity off from the Ignitech unit connector.
Click to expand...
I have mine next to the battery. I've cable tied the harness to the starter relay cable.

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MotoJouni said:
In Finland we have had some Ignitech units eventually to fail.
I have the original BTZ in place as a spare system, just need to swap the connectors.
Some have another programmed and tested spare Ignitech unit.
I think flexible fastening is very important and secondly keeping water and humidity off from the Ignitech unit connector.

-Jouni
Click to expand...

Interesting. I've never experienced a terminal failure of an Ignitech unit myself, but I've only installed about 15 of them on various bikes. The very first one I installed was on my Ducati MHR way back in 2007, so it's 19 years old and it's still working OK. I'd never heard of Ignitech before that. I found them online and was attracted by their tuning flexibility and low price. After the success of that first installation on the Ducati, I became a fan of their product.

I've had more failures of pickups than ignition units, in which case a spare ignition unit wouldn't help.

The only Ignitech fault I've personally come across was one unit on which the tacho output didn't work (from new). It worked fine in all other respects so it ran the bike OK. Ignitech offered to replace it but they wanted the faulty unit back for testing to confirm the fault before sending a replacement, which could have taken a few weeks turn around. The customer wanted the bike back on the road ASAP so decided to keep the faulty unit as it was already installed and the bike running OK. The tacho already had an inductive pickup on a spark plug lead so the non-functioning tacho output on the Ignitech didn't bother him. It was my preference to drive the tacho from the Ignitech so you can adjust the signal frequency to dial out any tacho error, but the tach was accurate enough as it was.

I suppose a spare pre-programmed unit would be handy and probably a wise investment if doing an extended road trip. Especially as they're not prohibitively expensive. I wouldn't consider the original BTZ system as a viable backup for the reasons Jouni stated in his second post. Besides, more often than not, the Ignitech installation was to replace a failed original ignition. So the original was rubbish anyway.

Speaking from a personal perspective, I'd be unlikely buy a spare Ignitech as a backup because I live in Tasmania which is a small enough island that you can't get far enough away for a bike recovery within a day or so to be an impractical proposition. Indeed, my bike trailer has been pressed into service on many occasions to rescue friends' bikes when they've conked out or crashed.

Another thing to consider is that I have Ignitech equipped bikes with both VR and Hall pickups, so I'd need 2 spare units to cover both types of installation.
 
I've had a Sachse box fail. Luckily only 4 kays from home. Middle cylinder failed, turned around to ride home on 2 cylinders and that failed about 1 kay from home, so now a dead box. Probably done less than 10k kays. As I live in a remote area I now carry a spare box on the bike.
Fitted an Ignitech to the 750sfc last year. Bike has never ran so well. It only gets track use so no problem if it goes tits up.
 
Why not carry a second ignitech, since it is plug swap, for the longer trip, very cheap compared to the rigamarole of fetching a stranded owner and Laverda??? Bit obvious to my mind. What i did with iis long box ( complex CDI variant ), made the inductive discharge short box as a traveling backup for the long box.

An Ignitech Pre prog'ed and tested backup unit on board.... as Jouni rightly indicated, ditto Cam. j
 
Yep, I like the plug and play repairs. I carry a spare Sasche box in the tail unit of the Jota and a trigger board wrapped carefully beside the battery.
To appease Paul I also carry a fully set up points plate and the original regulator on the Eagle so also a simple matter of changing over............:)
(But of course Piet is correct about that prick Murphy - apologies to smlav, not you;))
 
Nice thing about the Ignitech is that one spare box is good for basically an entire shed full of bikes from Bantam to Benelli-6 and every Laverda in between (assuming same pickup type). Just program it up to suit whatever bike you're tripping on. The spare can even be pinched from another bike in your shed, just remember to reprogram it back before reinstalling.
Given the number of these things in use these days the number of failures you hear about is vanishingly small, but if you want to be covered for it just take a spare box and even pickups.
No different to carrying a spare set of points and a clutch cable really...
 
Called a "Bathtub" curve, high MTBF at the initial commencement of item manufacture and usage, then low MTBF, until quality of ( for one ) silicon fabrication suffers and high failure rates ensue. Modern semiconductors are not the same as older semi conductors, fabrication wafer micron has changed significantly. Numbers game, manufacturers can only buy the parts available. Independent of source coding of the native program, as firmware applied to the semiconductor and operating the passive parts applied at manufacture.

Past reliability is not the sole harbinger of future reliability..... carry a spare, like insurance you wont need it and if it is needed...its there.

Reliability is in the eye of the beholder, looking at the pcb in question. HTH j
 
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