pvl

First Race

November 15th, 2008 |

Author: Admin

After riding the 1975 CR125 a few times to test it seemed all ok and ready to try on the race track.

On race day it fired up and crackled nicely and we took it to the start line, ready to go and then silence…. the engine cut out. Bugger, push it back to the van and start poking through the electrics to no avail so back home to the workshop to go through it in detail. Luckily I have the 74 CR125 so I can swap electical parts and isolate the problem to the CDI unit which had failed. Lack of use over the past 34 years has to have some impact.

It was suggested the a modern PVL ingnition system is the way to go so I ordered one from the US specifically for this model. When it arrived it looked a little complicated so I took the bike to a local motorcycle electrical shop who are famlar with these ignitions system to get it fitted but very quickly they discovered the rotor in the PVL kit had the wrong taper and would not fit, bugger, that was a waste of money. They then pointed out that the original ignition systems on these vintage bikes were very good and they produced a strong spark from minimal effort whereas the modern systems needed a very good kick to generate a strong spark. They suggested I just replace the CDI unit with a used one as there are many available since Honda used the same unit across a number of models/years.