83 Suzuki DR250 CDI box needed

[pave...@mindspring.com]

Hi all,

A friend in the Muscatine, IA area is in need of a CDI box for a 1983 Suzuki DR 250. Original part number is 32900-38210. No idea about interchange with other machines.

Anyone have one or can recommend a trustworthy source?

Thanks in advance!

John P.

[Moped Graham]

Hey John, 

For some reason it is not letting me reply directly to you, or showing your email. I apologize to everyone else for the spam.

The DR250's a rare bird, the parts fiche lists only the 82,83 and 85 (not 84?) DR and SP 250's using that CDI box. Those older, especially rare CDI boxes can be real tough to find, and when you find them on ebay people think they are made out of gold and magic unicorn farts.  

Your friend could try a DR200 CDI, that would be my course of action. Those bikes are extremely common and ought to be close. 

Looking at the wiring diagram it is a fairly standard 'AC' cdi with an external trigger. Aside from the black box mysticism of CDI units they are all fairly interchangeable if you know what to look for.  They will either be 'triggerless' or '2 wire' units which drive directly from a single coil using it for both power and ignition (many of the early dirtbikes are this way) or they will be 4/5 Wire units which get power from one coil and trigger from a separate coil.  

The CDI box itself is just an amplifier and a circuit with a built-in analog advance curve. For a 4 stroke it will advance steadily with RPM and for a 2-stroke it will retard on the top end to prevent detonation. All you need to know to swap is whether it is AC or DC (almost all older bikes are AC) triggered/triggerless and if it is 2t/4t. The triggerless ones are a little bit picky about the curve circuitry and coil output/winding so you gotta be careful with them, but the external trigger ones are much more one-size-fits-all. 

If you figure out the wiring, you can usually find a cheap chinese scooter CDI that will run just about anything.  For the DR250, it is likely that the only reason the part numbers changed were either minor changes to wire color, connectors or the internal advance circuit for fine tuning on different bikes.  In many cases you can get a more aggressive curve and more power by swapping a hotter motorcross CDI onto a enduro type bike. 

Due to some of the delay/advance circuitry, you CAN put a CDI box on a bike that will give it a dangerous level of advance (detonation) and exploderize the motor, so obviously check the timing with a timing light at various rpms and make sure it is reasonable, that being said the DR200 is very likely to be the same or very close. 

You might even be able to swap the entire stator from the DR200 and get lights/12v power if you're into all that. 

Best of luck! you can email me at motzingg at gmail if you have any other questions. 

Graham