Question for someone with a tach (1500)

I heard that same rumor about the emissions reduction, and perhaps there's some truth to it, but I'll tell you this: The wasted spark system was invented way before the days of smog laws.

It was done so a 2 cylinder bike would be lighter & cheaper because it only needed one coil, one set of points, and one condenser. A four cyl. bike needed only two of each. Of course a car with any number of cylinders had only one of each, but it needed a heavy and expensive distributor to make it work. Notice that modern cars have no distributor, but instead multiple coils like a motorcycle. My V-6 Pontiac happens to have lost spark ignition as well (and I'd forgot all about that) because it's a very accurate and high performance system. Really accurate distributors are really expensive to make. My V-6 Toyota does not have Lost spark. It has a coil for each plug.

Now here's the part where emissions might be an issue involved:

If you trigger the ignition from the cam, like my old Honda 350 twin, you need two points and two condensors, and two coils, because it fires at half engine speed (and was not a "twingle"). If the points were triggered from the crank (which makes it Lost Spark) you not only remove a coil, points, & condenser, but you increase ignition timing accuracy because the cam chain is no longer involved in the timing process.

The only downside? You have to accept the wasted spark, and points adjustment becomes twice as critical. Electronic ignition solved that part by eliminating all those points and condensers (well, except for CDI bikes) and it brought other improvements as well, all of which increased performance and reduced emissions.