[Adrian II]

Yours could be for a later UCE carb-fitted 350 Paul, RE India have had a few years to improve on their original black and green TCI boxes since the last of the pre-UCE models.

As a factory accessory a basic electronic ignition kit was available for the iron barrel Bullets, this had no electronic advance curve at all and simply relied on the mechanical auto-advance in the "distributor". It might be possible to lock the auto-advance and convert the dizzie to manual advance and retard. The Aldon Amethyst sounds interesting.

Not much use for the Electra-X, Electra 350 or AVL Classic though.  You presumably could get a fixed advance TCI easily enough and with some rather fiddly engineering build in a mechanical advance for the trigger unit, but would even 5 people on the planet actually want to ride the thing afterwards? Some way of turning the alternator round so that you could mount the stator and trigger on the inner primary chaincase and have the inner face of the rotor pointing inwards could make life a lot easier for checking ignition timing. I think the boss for the rotor's tapered mounting is riveted in, perhaps it could be drilled out, swapped over and re-riveted, maybe with some kind of vernier mount?

A.

[Paul W]

I think the Amethyst might be workable on a TCI bike. I had previously dispensed with the points in the distributor and fitted an Aldon Ignitor (sold under the “Pertronix” name in the USA). The TCI trigger might be usable but I’d have to look up the instructions online to check. I sold the entire setup to a fellow trialler when I swapped the Reliant engine for the Suzuki G10, which now has my own one-off supercharger throttle body and fuel injection setup, needing an ECU.

[Mick Bailey]

I just checked and none of the TCI units I have are marked with a timing figure. The latest green one was manufactured in 2008 and I don't know what was manufactured after then that was specifically for the Electra-X. There shouldn't be any variation in timing between similar units, but that assumes the programming is the same in both cases. Component tolerance may come into it in that the signal from the pickup goes through a conditioning circuit before being used as an input to the processor, but given the steep slope of the timing pulse and the short duration I can only see this being responsible for a fraction of a degree. Other than that it could be a design decision within the programmed advance curve but there's no clue to this marked on the units I have.

[Paul W]

Without dismantling my bike to photograph it I can’t prove that my TCI box is so marked, but I do have one of the box it came in, which has the same markings. Note that the packing date is 2014, so it might be for a UCE engine. However, it only has two sockets for wiring connections while I understand that later bikes had a third connection for a “side stand down” safety cutout.

Hitchcock’s lists the part without giving details of which bike it’s intended for. The one I bought came from India for under a third of their price, btw!

[Mick Bailey]

The box that the 2008 part came in just has a part number and nothing else and is the red print on a white background rather than the later packaging. That particular one came from Watsonian. It makes more sense to mark the unit with the advance, especially if there's yet another change or revision. Maybe they recognized that the older units had insufficient advance and have marked the later ones to identify them.

[Paul W]

Possibly so. The original TCI box on the bike, which is a 2004 model was like that (that is now stored as my spare), marked with the part number only. Maybe that one has 28 degrees max advance built in, too.

As I said, presumably with the advertised 32 degree max advance, this box seems to free up the top end of the rev range; I originally tried it as an experiment, but I've never since taken it off. The bike is now no plodder (actually it will plod, but it can also rev quite high, to the point where the valves will bounce, even though I lightened the rocker arms).