Simple pleasures

This story kicked off in 2019 when I was at Rex’s Speed Shop in Sussex, where I was catching up with what the growing business was offering in the way of new and updated ignition and charging systems for classic machines from Japan.

Glancing around the workshop I noticed some sheets of blank printed circuit boards, each of which would have been about the size of large postage stamp. I asked boss Marcus Rex what they were for.

“I’m working on some ideas for electronic flywheel magnetos,” was the gist of what Marcus said. That rang a bell with me, because living in a vac-bag down the side of my house was a Honda CG125 that used one of the crudest-looking flywheel magnetos ever designed. I thought it would be the ideal candidate for an upgrade. Marcus agreed, but Covid-19 interrupted proceedings and it wasn’t until July 2020 that the bike could be extracted from the bag, cleaned