Not a good day

[runewolf]

Ok, not my day at all... First off one of my heros dies in a very bad way and now to combat my blues I tried to go for a ride only to find my bike will not run. First thought, dumba** your low on gas, (it started and idled badly for about 2 minutes before dieing). So put 2 gals in and tried again, it tries to catch and dies.pull the plugs, they are black and you can smell gas on them... Clean them off with brake cleaner and a wire brush and test the spark against the engine block... I see a very small spark that is not reaching the tip of the plug??? Similar for all plugs? The bike ran fine last week, has stayed in the garage the rest of the time on its center stand waiting for the rain to stop. The only thing I did was take the starter cover off and paint it...

Any ideas?

[Dink]

Weak spark! Check power to the coils,check and clean connections.

Dink

[runewolf]

Dink,
What kind of voltage should I have at the coils?

[runewolf]

Ok, another dumb question, how do you check the power at the coil? the wire is glued in... do you go to the Y connector for both coils and check it there? If so I have 11 volts until I hit the starter then it drops off until I let off.

[Iceman71]

hey runewolf,
I'm not sure if this will help but I know on my 82 gs850 I have had lots of gliches with the electrical...almost all due to bad connections....start with the battery post connections, rotate the fuses in the panel (sounds dumb I know but have had to do this several times even after cleaning the contacts), and check and clean any grounds you can find (particularly at the coil mountng points..
I really hopes this helps

[runewolf]

Thanks Iceman,
I'm going to try that when I get home. I believe at some point the wire harness had been changed out becuase I do not have the fuse box that most wireing diagrams show. I have the main fuse and some sort of relay where the fuse box should be.

[Iceman71]

no problem, keep me posted and i'll try an help if i can...after all it's better to ride than to fix!!! lol (been there done that)

[runewolf]

Ok, I have cleaned most of the connections and made sure everything was connected.... Now I have no spark on any plug. I also noticed that one coil is very warm, while the other is room temp. I have 12.5v at the battery and 11.5v at the Y connector (orange/white wire) going to the coils.

[Iceman71]

runewolf,
it sounds almost like the set of points that are controlling the warm coil are not opening or if you have electronic ignition it's not breaking power to that coil....hmmmmm. there are 2 things i would check (not saying that i'm on the right track here..kinda new to bikes) one would be the grounding of the large plate on the left side of the bike where the fuse panel should be...i know if this plate is not grounded things don't work...an if i'm not mistaken this is where the ignition box is located. Second take a test light to the positive wire going to each coil (org/white wire), try and get a connector that is closest to the coil. crank the starter and the test light should flash as the engine rotates telling you that each coil is recieving a signal from the points/ignition module.(do this for each coil).
You may also want to check coil ohm resistance, plug wire resistance and the resistance through the plug wire caps at the plug end. (common problems so i've heard....i'm sorry i don't have the specs but there are likely plenty of posts here covering this.)

The way things keep changing it is almost like there is a bad connection that has been disturbed....if the test light test and cleaning the plate doesn't work....go back the what you did first before the problems started...the starter cover...when you painted it you may have disturbed the ground path for the starter...try sanding down to bare metal only the places where the cover surface and block touch....was there any wires that were moved or disconected when you did the cover?

I really hope this helps, let me know how it turns out

[runewolf]

runewolf,
it sounds almost like the set of points that are controlling the warm coil are not opening or if you have electronic ignition it's not breaking power to that coil....hmmmmm. there are 2 things i would check (not saying that i'm on the right track here..kinda new to bikes) one would be the grounding of the large plate on the left side of the bike where the fuse panel should be...i know if this plate is not grounded things don't work...an if i'm not mistaken this is where the ignition box is located. Second take a test light to the positive wire going to each coil (org/white wire), try and get a connector that is closest to the coil. crank the starter and the test light should flash as the engine rotates telling you that each coil is recieving a signal from the points/ignition module.(do this for each coil).
You may also want to check coil ohm resistance, plug wire resistance and the resistance through the plug wire caps at the plug end. (common problems so i've heard....i'm sorry i don't have the specs but there are likely plenty of posts here covering this.)

The way things keep changing it is almost like there is a bad connection that has been disturbed....if the test light test and cleaning the plate doesn't work....go back the what you did first before the problems started...the starter cover...when you painted it you may have disturbed the ground path for the starter...try sanding down to bare metal only the places where the cover surface and block touch....was there any wires that were moved or disconected when you did the cover?

I really hope this helps, let me know how it turns out

I'll hunt for the specs on the resistance... I'll probably have to wait until tomorrow to borrow a test light... No I didn't have to disconnect any wires when I removed the starter cover. I am concerned about the voltage drop from the battery to the Y connector before the coils... Should I be losing 1 volt?

[HiSPL]

That voltage drop is typical. There's alot of thin wire and dodgy connectors between the battery and the coils. A 1 volt drop is pretty good, actually. I've had worse on mine!

How old is your battery?

[runewolf]

Battery is a little over a year old. I'm going to borrow one from a friend here tomorrow afternoon to try it.

[runewolf]

Ok, found this in another thread...

"If you want to bench test the coils to get an idea of their condition the primary side where the ignitor hooks up to the coils should give a resistance readin of 3-5 ohms. It won't matter which probe goes on which terminal. Take this reading with the wires from the ignitor removed form the coils. Then to check the secondary readings place one probe in plug cap number 1 and the other in plug cap 4. You should get a reading of 30,000 to 50,000 ohms if you have stock coils. Then do the same with caps 2 & 3 and check your readings."

Checked those at Lunch...

One Coil is giving me 38k and is the one that was cold while the other other one was hot and is within spec... The other one is giving me 82k and is the one that was definately hot.

Charged my battery over night and let it cool off until lunch... it is reading 13.2v while at the Y I still get 11.2v

[runewolf]

Ok.... I accidently left the key turned to run on the bike after checking stuff at lunch... When I got home 4.5 hours later, the RH coil that gave me the 82k ohms reading was almost hot enough to burn you and you could smell something like it was melting. All other wiring and the other coil is cold to the touch. So something is really bad off with this coil.

[HiSPL]

The stock coils from a bandit or katans will fit just fine. Plus you can replace the wires on those coils...

The ones I've used look like these.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1998-Suzuki-Katana-GSX600F-Ignition-Coils-w-Wires-98_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ35594QQihZ016QQitemZ260028926650QQrdZ1QQsspagenameZWDVW

Good Luck!