Motorcycle Repair: honda shadow, honda shadow 1100, chassis wiring

Question
I have a 1993 honda shadow 1100 and the engine went bad so I bought a 1997 motor. Come to find out that the 97 only has 1 pulse generator in the motor, where the 93 has 2. The 97 engine wont fire with the 93 cdi box. Is there a way to wire the 93 cdi box to make it work with the 97 motor or will I have to buy a cdi box for a 97 model?

Answer
Shawn, you have to match the chassis' electronics with the motor configuration. The different module will have different wires going to the chassis wiring, no doubt. There is a slim possibility that the 97 cdi module will work with the 93 chassis, but you would have to change the wiring or configure it to fit the single pulse generator setup. It may just use one pair of the 93 harness wires that are already there. I doubt that you can change the 93 cdi box to work with the 97 firing order, though.

Might just have to swap out the whole 97 harness to make it work. If you are good with wiring, you may be able to rework the 93 harness wires to mate with the 97 cdi box, but study some wiring diagrams to see how big a difference is between the two models.

Bill Silver