another suckeranother suckerWell I finally did it. I bought a Dream for a few hundred bucks. I was told it ran a year ago (ha-ha-famous last words). The owner said it needs a new condenser and most likely a new ignition coil and "She'll run". Does anyone have any advice with these two components. Any pitfalls would be helpful and possibly a reputable place to purchase these?
Condenser is pretty easy to find, a few places have them. Try http://www.olypen.com/retro/ might as well get a set of points and maybe a petcock rebuild kit from them also.
The ignition coil is a little harder to find. But I'm willing to bet the coil is fine, its the wires that are at fault. First I would remove the plug caps and cut an inch off and replace caps. If this doesn't work see if you can feel any breaks in the wires. My CA77 wires had a few areas that felt like there could be broken. What I did was cut the wires about 6 inches from the coil, screwed in a drywall screw half way, cut it off, sharpened it a bit, and then screwed on new copper core plug wires. Finished it off with heat shrink tubing. Thanks for the info. I'll check out the site. Changing the points makes sense too. I forgot to mention the bike came with a new battery the owner had purchased. He said when it was running it would not hold a charge and thought the battery was at fault. Does this sound like a bad Rectifier (diode???) possibly? That seems like the cheapest place to start.
Rectifier is a good possibility.There usually is an aftermarket coil on Ebay for sale.I bought one for my CA77 and it works fine.May want to switch to a new solid state one.Also, you may not be getting any charge from your stator either.You may want to check voltage coming from it.I think the pink wire should have twice the voltage as the brown or yellow wire at idle.Rusty rotor could be an issue and or stator itself.They get alot of oil in them when the crank seal starts to leak.
Thanks again. I'm new to this, so your help is appreciated. Some of that was a little over my head, but hopefully Bill Silver's restoration and repair books, I have ordered, will shed a little light. I was wondering though, can you tell me what the difference between the C77 and the CA77 might be.
I was looking at the Olypen website for the condenser and only saw the C77 listed. Are these the same bike, and will the C77 condenser work in the CA77 as well? Thanks. No problem-CA77 is the American version,thus "A" after the C.Other than that not alot different.I actually got Bills CD recently after I already got my bike on the road.It would have been very helpful to have before I got started.You can spend hours going thru it,I did.It will expalin alot.I was new two years ago also, but have learned tons from this site and others.Let us know on how your doing.Joe
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