bike ran great until today

[koolaid_kid]

If you have the type of boot that screws into the wire you can trim the wire by about one half an inch and get to fresh copper. This works most of the time.

[oldrookie]

I'd spend the few dollars for the boots first. Might solve the issue for under $10.

Coils get a bit pricey.

[81gs450l]

the wire looks like its been trimmed before by the previous owner. if i take anymore off the wire it may be to short.

[pete]

I just had a thought... have you had a timing light on it to make sure both sides are firing properly?

[81gs450l]

i havent had a timing light on it, but i pulled the plugs and the left plug was wet an smelled like gas. the right plug has no smell of gas and was dry. thats when i discovered the left plug wire was messed up. is there anyway to just replace the wires or do i need to replace the coils and wires? where can i find the replacement parts.

[oldrookie]

Might try swapping the coils and wires from one side to the other to confirm that the wire is the issue.

[pete]

Swapping coils and wires won't be so easy unfortunately as the plugs are one way and done specifically so you can't swap them... which can be a bugger in cases like this.

The plug leads are moulded into the coils permanently to the best of my knowledge, so you're possibly up for another coil if the wire on that one is bad.

However, in theory any coil with the same resistance spec's *should* do the trick but I'm not sure what other coils would be the same...

Having said that, try searching around here for 450 coil threads because I'm sure someone with an '83 450L found a different model GS that worked... I just can't remember the screen name or thread name...

[oldrookie]

Huh. Did not know that.

If you ever get the urge, I'd love to see a picture of them.

[pete]

As it so happens, I took some when trying to find replacement plugs originally

[81gs450l]

i trimmed the wire back to see if i could fix it and now its about 1/4" to short. can i use coils from a car and make my own plug wires? then i would have seperate coils and wires

[pete]

i trimmed the wire back to see if i could fix it and now its about 1/4" to short. can i use coils from a car and make my own plug wires? then i would have seperate coils and wires

Bugger! The primary resistance is the key... check in the manual where it says about testing the coil and lists the spec's for them, and as long as the primary resistance is the same it should be fine.

The primary resistance is between the two wires connectiong to the harness, usually low 2 or 4 ohms or something.

[81gs450l]

i was looking at coils and reading online about coils. i found the primary resistance is 3 ohms and the secondary resistance is 20 ohms. is the secondary resistance as important as the primary? who should i look at for replacement coils?

[pete]

I would imagine the secondary more affects what sort of spark plug you need, so probably best to keep the same too.

Did you search around for the other 450 guy who put other coils on?

Otherwise I'd stick a post in the electrical forum as there are guys here who will know the other models much better, I'm pretty much limited to the 450 twins...