What a day!

Finally. I did it. I installed the fabled dyna coils on my XJ. It was a trial, to be sure.

Buying the right tools for the job was the first difficulty. I went to my local hometown big box retailer and bought angled aluminum (about 4' long, 1"x1"x1/8") for the brackets, as well as a hacksaw, some decent metal drilling bits, and a little "mini-hack" that was supposed to cut through metal like butter.

I also stopped in at Harbor Freight and picked up a heat gun (more on that in a minute), some bolts, a bench vise, some specialized screwdrivers and some other odds and ends. Note: Harbor Freight is truly a low end merchandiser. Most of their stuff comes from China (hence, my nickname "China Freight"). Unless you're buying bolts, tape, garden gloves or a carabiner, you're better off visiting your local hardware store (not that there are many small town hardware stores left).

I bought the heat gun with the intention of heating up the piece of aluminum I had on hand (a flat piece of door sill that should have worked, but didn't), and then bending it into the shape I wanted. Apparently the metallic properties of aluminum are such that you aren't allowed to do that. The metal cracked, then broke. Well, it was worth a try.

I removed the old coils from the bike. Actually very easy to do considering their placement on the XJ. Coil covers came off, coil wires removed from plugs and set aside. I had received instructions downloaded from the XJCD from a fellow in Pinckney that made the job much easier. Thanks, fella. He owns an X andd we have been corresponding back and forth on a variety of Yama-topics and plan to get together at some point and fine tune our bikes.

I placed the angled aluminum I had purchased in my new vise and got to work hacking away. 10 minutes later, I was halfway through. Butter?! More like angled aluminum! And I had 4 of these to make. I decided to use my trusty dremmel tool. Now that cut through like butter. Of course, I broke about 12 of the little cutting wheels, but all told, a very clean job when said and done. Hack sawing through them would have been ugly in many ways, not the least of which includes my daft handling of said tool.

When I had all 4 of the little brackets, I was pretty proud of myself. There is an old carpentry rule that should be followed to the letter: Measure twice, cut once. The pieces were all the right size, but figuring where to drill the holes was difficult. I only had 2 hands, and fitting everything together, holding it and making a mark on the metal proved to be very difficult. At first, I guesstimated. No matter how strongly you want to do it this way, I must advise against it. The holes are very particular in their placement, and if you willy-nilly start drilling holes, you'll end up making more brackets. In fact, you may want to just cut out 8 of the little brackets right at the beginning to save yourself hassles later. I ended up wasting 3 of them.

What I finally ended up doing was applying some black spray paint as a marking point on the coil mounting posts and holding the brackets, with new coils held in place, pressing the brackets up against the post. This gave me a good idea where to drill. Holes drilled, ViOLa! Success! I applied crush washers and bolts in place and mocked up the placement.

Of vital importance is filing down the burrs on the aluminum. I rounded off all corners, filed down the holes a bit to make them nice and smooth.

Once that was done, I cut off the old coil wires (shedding a tear as I did so... goodbye old coil. I knew you well) from both coils and set them aside. Following the instructions from the Dynacoil worksheet (definitely not layman's language) I crimped the coil wires. In retrospect, I should have used solder, but my gun was out of commision. I used the vise to to "crimp" the wires together and it worked beautifully. I had a crimping tool from my previous install, but it just wasn't doing the job. The trick here is to crimp tightly, but not so much that you damage the threads of the inner plug wire.

It's also important that those wires you just so painstakingly installed do not touch the conductive posts or brackets you just fabricated. Make sure you have enough clearance. This took some finagling on my part, but once done, looked something like this:

Make sure everything is nice and tight (but not too tight... no torque wrench needed, but if you ever need to remove these coils, no sense in making it difficult on yourself.)

Don't forget the grounding wire! I had everything installed, then noticed a tiny, almost invisible ring connector just hanging out, waiting to cause mischief. This would have haunted me for days, but it attaches on the bottom coil post.

One final word on installation. You might find it easier on yourself to mark the brackets with their location (TL for top left, BR for bottom right.) I had to take a bracket off, set it down amongst a few of my previous failures, then spent 15 minutes playing "Will the correct bracket please stand up" as I fit 3 different brackets with different holes in place, trying to make it work.

Finally, the end was in sight. I wired all the coils, measuring them for distance to the plugs then made the cut. (Be generous, you can always cut more later) I discarded the dyna coil plug caps. I preferred the stock caps that came with my bike. I cut these off, applied dielectric grease to the connect points, then screwed them on. Make sure your wires are seated deeply enough! And be sure to slide the coil rubber caps in place BEFORE you slip the end of the wire inside the coil. I don't know how difficult it would be to pull those wires out, but from what I've read, it would be nearly impossible. Once you've trimmed your opposite end of the wire, apply the connector, crimp and insert! Easy cheesy!

Or maybe not. The moment of truth had arrived. Triple checking all my connections, hoping for the best (but preparing for the worst) I turned the bike on. So far, so good. All lights lit up like they were supposed to. Giving it a bit of choke, I tenatively depressed the starter button. The bike turned over, but... what's that?! A backfire? Well, I had just recently cleaned the carbs. Let me give it another ... a hiss, a puff of white smoke and another backfire! CRaP!

Folks, this is what happens when you connect the wrong wires to the plugs. I had followed a diagram to the letter, triple checking the connections... however, my mistake was in installing the primary coil in the secondary coils spot, then wiring them. You can't do that! After a quick check with fellow members of the XJ owners group, I had indeed gotten my wires crossed Unfortunately, I couldn't just re-wire the coils to the plugs. That's right, I had to remove both brackets again, switch them to the opposite sides, and rewire.

Finally, success!! The bike fired right up! Sounds a bit choppy, but I know a carb tune is due. Once Morgan arrives...

All in all, I enjoyed doing this project. I have never been real handy, nor much of a mechanic, but in the last week, I have torn apart my carbs, re-wired my coils. Who knew? A true sense of fulfillment rests upon me.

Much like the aluminum dust and grease, dirt and accumulated grime only a 24 year old bike can share.