Arcing, what are the consequences?

[Guest]

Referring to my "weirdest thing" thread here, while I haven't had a chance to check further yet, it appears I may have an arcing problem. If this is indeed the case I'm wondering what sort of other issues could this cause.

I know in the case of cars, arcing would cause radio interference but do little if any other damage. I'm thinking that in the case of bikes with electronic ignitions it could be more of a serious problem.

If this is indeed the case, I wonder how long this bike may have been suffering with it and if it may have done damage specifically to the, known to be"frail ignitor". Do I need to worry about that?


Can anyone enlighten me?

Cheers,
Spyug

[sedelen]

Referring to my "weirdest thing" thread here, while I haven't had a chance to check further yet, it appears I may have an arcing problem. If this is indeed the case I'm wondering what sort of other issues could this cause.

I know in the case of cars, arcing would cause radio interference but do little if any other damage. I'm thinking that in the case of bikes with electronic ignitions it could be more of a serious problem.

If this is indeed the case, I wonder how long this bike may have been suffering with it and if it may have done damage specifically to the, known to be"frail ignitor". Do I need to worry about that?


Can anyone enlighten me?

Cheers,
Spyug

Arcing I think is nothing more than a short to ground. What that could lead to if it's a plug wire, or ignition is miss firing, not running on one cylinder, maybe two. Just provide the necessary insulation to stop it. If there is the chance for any damage, it was probably already done.

[rustybronco]

An arc generated or a voltage spike on a car 'can' have undesirable consequences. Most vehicles sensors run off a 5 volt reference. If a voltage spike should occur when the ECM (PCM, ECU...) is sampling the reference voltage the reference voltage will appear be much higher and all the values coming from the sensors will be seen as low because of it. This use to be a problem with some aftermarket starter solenoids that didn't use a diode across the solenoids pull down coil. When you released the key from the start position, the ECM would sample the voltage just as a spike was being dumped on the B+ line. Sometimes she'd run good and other times not so good.

There's other problems an arc could create as well.

[chef1366]

Unless it's arcing dirctly onto the ground to the ignition I don't think this would cause an issue if repaired.