I explained last time that during my trip to Bardi I had a mis-firing engine when the Dinoplex was switched to "normale" while on the "emergenza" setting all was fine. Well, "all was fine" so it seemed but in reality all was NOT fine!

I started my analysis of the problem by going straight to the expert - Adrian Le Hanne of www.dinoplex.org - who has proved to be very knowledgeable and helpful. After an exchange of questions, photos and a diagram of my existing setup Adrian explained that first and foremost I have the wrong coil. I have a BN 200 L model which was used for the previous points-only setup, while I should have a BZR 205 A model which has a ballast resistor on top (see pictures below). To make this work together with the Dinoplex someone has rewired everthing, changing the polarity of the coil, so that in reality the actual Dinoplex internals DON'T ever get used. This may be because they don't work and someone was bypassing the system - at this stage I don't know. What I do know is that in the "emergenza" setting (points-only) the car works and the rev counter behaves correctly. In the "normale" setting the points are still being used but this time a very high voltage (580 V) is being pushed to the coil, distributor resistor, rev counter and wiring making it dangerous to say the least. The rev counter was bouncing around in this setup - and no wonder!

On Adrian's advice I have disconnected the rev counter altogether and have two choices: 1) Get hold of a correct coil and then see if the Dinoplex unit actually works or not. 2) Substitute the Dinoplex and coil for a modern replacement.

I like the idea of originality, but also would like the car to improve so I am going to plump for replacing the Dinoplex internals with a modern Bosch unit which sits nicely in the original casing. This also means getting a corresponding Bosch high performance coil and I am looking at ordering them now although it's a bit tricky here in Italy as everyone is going off on holiday and shutting down until September!

An example of what I am going to be doing can be seen here where Fred of Le Blog Dino has done the same although he went a step further and installed an optical distributor system as well.



Current "wrong" setup: ignition setup

Dinoplex switch opened: switch

Wiring diagram of how "not" to do it: config

Older BN 200 L coil BN 200 L coil

Correct BZR 205 A coil: BZR 205 A coil