Hello Wildman90
I’ve waited a few days before responding to your post in order to gauge how much interest there is in this thread. Obviously not very much. Let me give you a little of my background. I wanted to get away from nitro powered glow engines so I figured the best way (and cheapest way) to do that was to convert a weed wacker engine. I have a compound vise that I mated up with my drill press to serve as a poor man’s milling machine; I don’t have a lathe so I had to use my neighbor’s. My first attempt at a conversion was a 31 cc Homelite. I wanted to use CDI ignition so this thread intrigued me considering the fact that CH ignitions were running around $110.

I began gathering materials for this project and quickly realized that the cost of the individual parts and pieces was going to exceed what I could buy an RCexl ignition (and this was with gr8flyer55 graciously agreeing to supply me with a step-up transformer and programming the EPROM). So I gave up trying to build an ignition and bought an RCexl for my conversion. After all was said and done I ended up with a heavy, underpowered engine. I realize others on this forum have converted Homies and achieved pretty good performance, but they have achieved this by porting and other mods that require an in-depth knowledge of how these 2-strokes operate. Way beyond me.

The reason you are not getting a lot of feedback on this subject is that there is not that much interest in building home brew ignitions, not that the folks who have built them are elitists. Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you can’t develop a parts list from a schematic diagram then you are out of your depth. Do you know the difference between DIP and SMT? Do you know the difference between a buck-boost switching circuit and a flyback switching circuit? This is definitely not a cook book project and you should be well grounded in fundamentals before attempting a project like this. The biggest advantage to building your own ignition is repairability. This advantage disappears if you don’t understand how it works. This thread is about building a home brew ignition, not a tutorial in electronics.

There was a time when the cheapest way to get into gassers was to do it yourself. Times have changed. The DLE line of engines allows you to run a high performance 30 cc engine at a reasonable cost and RCexl provides ignitions for the masses. I now fly three of them. But that’s just me.

With all that said, if tinkering with electronics floats your boat, then have at it and enjoy. You will learn a lot as you go. Just don’t expect a lot of help on this forum.
Good luck

Bert