Ignition upgrades necessary??

[Bill Hilly]

I notice that a lot of people on the Facebook sights are replacing the stock coil on the Chinese Dual Sports with a Nibbi aftermarket coil, and many replace the CDI box as well. Most claim that it inproves performance, or are more dependable than stock. Like has been mentioned here before, there is a lot of over inflated hype over some mods that are not always necessary. Are the stock coils, and CDI boxes a common point of failure? Would I gain any performance on my internally stock bike, that has aftermarket exhaust, and pod filter, by upgrading the coil, or CDI box?

[Megadan]

Originally Posted by Bill Hilly

I notice that a lot of people on the Facebook sights are replacing the stock coil on the Chinese Dual Sports with a Nibbi aftermarket coil, and many replace the CDI box as well. Most claim that it inproves performance, or are more dependable than stock. Like has been mentioned here before, there is a lot of over inflated hype over some mods that are not always necessary. Are the stock coils, and CDI boxes a common point of failure? Would I gain any performance on my internally stock bike, that has aftermarket exhaust, and pod filter, by upgrading the coil, or CDI box?

The stock coils are generally ok. Eventually their performance starts to Peter out on the top end some and when replaced with a new and slightly stronger coil it may seem like a big gain. I replaced my Hawks coil with less than 1k miles on the odometer and the performance gain was minimal at best.

The stock CDI imho has a decent curve to it as it is. Most of the cheap aftermarket units advance the timing in the lower rpm the most and at the top end give very little. All they do tend to do is cause hard starting issues on cold mornings.

I did try an adjustable unit that allowed you to change the advance curve and it did the best overall. Other than that the higher end crf230f units, which I also have, performs about the same.as the stock unit. But the curve is slightly different to account for the higher rpm nature of the ohc crf engine.

In short, the coil may be an ok upgrade to keep on the shelf until the stock coil dies out. The cdi is a toss up. There are benefits to be found, but having tried them all the stock unit always seemed to have the best balance of performance and drive ability.