Can anyone explain how the timing and the ignition works on a 1989 Suzuki FA50?
A big question depending on what you already know. This should help
https://www.manualslib.com/manual/999530/Suzuki-Fa50.html?page=3#manual
Points in a distributor are like a light switch in your house, flip the switch, light comes on or goes off. Your the mechanical part opening and closing the points. A system without points just replaces the mechanical switch with an electrical one. Lets say you put a motion sensor on your house lights so they come on when you enter the room. The motion sensor is doing the "switching" instead of you. Can also be accomplished by timing from a magneto/flywheel. A magnetic spot on magneto passes a pickup coil that creates an electrical signal that "turns the light switch on".
Hope that helps (the manual ; )
@hillbilly
This is a pointless ignition system and has a cdi kind of thing.
@hillbilly
And it has nothing around the flywheel except the stator
Yes I know it's a pointless system, have you looked at the manual yet? I obviously failed at trying to explain some different ways to turn a switch on and thus allow current to flow, sorry. Bottom line, it's a switch that turns on and off at certain times and a "switch" can be made to turn on/off by many different ways. Magnetic pickups were/are a common improvement over failure prone mechanical switch actions. The service manual will help you see how this works on this bike.