Points upgrade to 80s Ignitor Box

[sam000lee]

One of the condensors on one of our GS550's, specifically a '78 with points, failed. I had a spare set from my GS750 that I swapped in from when I put a Dyna in that bike so it's running for now but I want to upgrade the system. I had stripped a bunch of parts of a couple of extra 80's GS550's I had, including an ignitor box and pickup plate.

Is there anything I need to consider before taking the points plate in, throwing the 80's pickup plate in and wiring in the ignitor box? When I've installed Dyna ignitions before, I've used the mechanical advance and doing some research see a little discrepancy between some of the electronic ignition systems and whether you keep the mechanical advance or not. What's the deal there?

Thanks!

[phydeauxmutt]

Electronic advance appeared in '83 on the larger bikes, not sure about the 550.

As long as you wire everything correctly, what you have should work.

[salty_monk]

The 80's used mechanical advance. The 550 had two different types from memory, I'm not sure whether that will cause you any fitment issues. Personally I'd just fit another Dyna S if it was me. Less hassle

[sam000lee]

Thanks for the input. I'm going to try and make it work with the ignitor box and pickup plate that I have. I'd be happy to shell out for another dyna but it's not my bike (we kind of have a fleet of GS550's at my house that I maintain) and I'm really interested because I like playing with GS bikes want to minimize having to have to maintain points on other people's bikes lol. I'll report back after I try it this week/end.