From: Bruce White
Date: 03 Feb 2001
Time: 10:44:33
Remote Name: 129.96.230.236
That's true.... I have built many of these for myself and others when they were popular many years ago. My last one took out the transistor on a trip in the Canadian Rockies miles from nowhere in the middle of the night. Thank god solid state devices are now much improved in the high temperatures found under the bonnet. The other problem is the mechanical points are still used, just the current is far less and thus your points life is greatly increased. There are some other advantages to transistor-assisted points but once again I would not choose to use this method on a 6 volt system. The other method we played with back then was the good old CDI (cap dischage ign). Those that have used these will remember how we use to fit a little switch so we could revert back to the original system when the CDI failed! Boy we were good back then.....
Bruce