75 Z1 Coil Upgrade Question???

So on my newly acquired 75 Z1 900 I am going to do the Wired George upgrade and figure why not try to run the coil on plug like the newer bikes and do away with the DYNA's all together. Has anyone done this and if so is there any recommendations you can share. Thanks Guys !!!

I'm not sure of what you are asking.  Something has to fire the spark plug and it has to be a high voltage burst timed to ignite the fuel/air mixture in the cylinder.  That's the purpose of an ignition system.  Are you asking if anyone has converted a Z1 to a totally different setup?

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So on my newly acquired 75 Z1 900 I am going to do the Wired George upgrade and figure why not try to run the coil on plug like the newer bikes and do away with the DYNA's all together. Has anyone done this and if so is there any recommendations you can share. Thanks Guys !!!
 

Wired George band-aid.   Ed

The Wired George mod has been discussed a buzillion times here. There are basically three positions.

1. Some say it is brilliant and are happily using it.
2. Some say it is nothing more than avoiding the real problem, which is a wiring harness that needs attention, and will cause other problems down the road.
3. Some don't give a s__t one way or the other.

So far as I know, nobody has ever changed their mind about it.

The coil on plug mod could be interesting, but it does require some modifications to the electrical system. You will be giving up two coils to add four. If you are seriously interested, I recommend searching the ZRXOA discussion board. Several members there have made the conversion. It saves a bit of weight, but adds electrical complexity. There is no free lunch as far as I can tell. I strongly suspect you will need to replace your points ignition with a fully electric system, probably Dynateck.

I did this mod on my 78 and it is flawless and I feel 1000% more confident on the road with this and the upgraded fuse box he mentioned as opposed to the old bubble type, but agreed each his own.

Something like these

Olbeedo post=852636Something like these

I think the first issue you'll find with coil-on-plus is that they are mechanically too long.  Maybe you can find shorter ones, but most of the ones I've seen are intended to go into a deep hole in the middle of a twin-cam valve cover.  If you put one of those on a Z1/900/1000 engine it would stick way out on the 1 and 4 cylinders.

The second issue is that you'd likely need some other electrical piece to trigger the coil packs.  This may be fairly simple, but I suspect you need some kind of interface as opposed to directly connecting the coils to the points or to a Dyna-S.  In any case you'd have to research or reverse engineer the coil pack.

Third, what problem are you trying to solve?  My 2013 WRX uses a traditional coil pack with two coils and wasted spark, essentially identical to the KZ configuration.  If what you have is working, it's unlikely anything you replace it with will work any better.  It'll just be different.





 

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Wired George band-aid.   Ed

I see your point Ed, but it's not really that bad.  I mean, you yourself added a relay for your horn upgrade, right? 

While it's probably not necessary in many cases, or might be a band-aid to avoid addressing an issue with the harness, adding a relay to power the coils directly is based on sound engineering principles.  The coil power path through the harness is long and winding, including going up through the handlebars and back out.  Fresh tires, quality brake pads, Dyna coils.  These are largely a form of insurance, an effort to make sure that all the parts are performing at 100%.  There is no reason to expect the coil-relay mod will make anything better than 100%, but it will take some load off the 40+ year old harness and ensure the coils are operating as intended.  It's probably not something I would do myself, but I get why folks do it.

 

In my opinion, the problem with coil-on-plug is that it is just plain ugly.  It is designed to reach down through a deep hole in a valve cover where it would be hidden and fully supported by the valve cover.  On the Kz you will have big wobbly "sticks" attached to the top of the plugs just dying to broken off and looking crooked.

You won't really get a much hotter spark than a Dyna S on a normal motor.  And if you go to very high compression or boost, you will want an MSD setup as opposed to flyback.
If you want to upgrade from a Dyna S, I would recommend going to a factory system.  They are much more efficient and seemingly more reliable based on posts on this forum over the last 20 years.  But they are not cheap, and very hard to find a set that hasn't been abused.  They usually come off parts bikes that have sat outside.  So a Dyna S is still probably your best bet for convenience and cost.

 

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Wired George band-aid.   Ed

I see your point Ed, but it's not really that bad.  I mean, you yourself added a relay for your horn upgrade, right? 

While it's probably not necessary in many cases, or might be a band-aid to avoid addressing an issue with the harness, adding a relay to power the coils directly is based on sound engineering principles.  The coil power path through the harness is long and winding, including going up through the handlebars and back out.  Fresh tires, quality brake pads, Dyna coils.  These are largely a form of insurance, an effort to make sure that all the parts are performing at 100%.  There is no reason to expect the coil-relay mod will make anything better than 100%, but it will take some load off the 40+ year old harness and ensure the coils are operating at intended.  It's probably not something I would do myself, but I get why folks do it.


 

Dyna S are power eating. I did the relay mod to take that load off my 40+- harness. I also upgraded to all LED lighting to help. 

I did a little research and it is really of no value other than "custom" and may prove to be more of a headache than I care to deal with, I'll stick to the traditional restomod upgrades and do the front and rear suspensions and blow the motor up as big as i can in Z1 900 motor without needing a cooler.