Clarification for the village idiot

[mvalenti]

Ok... had some issues last week with the bike during my after reshim shakedown run... bike lost power and died. Sorting thru the electrics this week, pulled the coils off and found the orange/white wire had a bare spot and could have been causing some issues.

Last night I tried to check my coil while it was on the bench. 3 wires from the coil read 5.2 ohm (high, should i be worried?), but I could not get a reading across the plug wires. I understand the test to measure from plug wire to plug wire on each coil, correct?

-Mark

[tom203]

Remove the plug caps and measure plug wire to plug wire-probably be about 12k ohms. Sometimes it's hard to measure plug cap to plug cap due to corrosion, but a typical reading might be 24 k to 33 k ohms.
Your primary resistance seems high at 5 ohms, but some multimeters give bad readings with weak batteries

[mvalenti]

Will try tonight. Should they just slide up the wire? Once off/up, I plan on cleaning up the metal bits with a brass brush to get em shiny again and applying some electrolytic grease.

[koolaid_kid]

No, they screw in/out. While you have them off, trim about 1/2" off the tip of each wire. They tend to oxidize inside the wire and loose conductivity. You should see shiny copper wire in the center if done correctly.

[Toasty]

Ok... had some issues last week with the bike during my after reshim shakedown run... bike lost power and died. Sorting thru the electrics this week, pulled the coils off and found the orange/white wire had a bare spot and could have been causing some issues.

Last night I tried to check my coil while it was on the bench. 3 wires from the coil read 5.2 ohm (high, should i be worried?), but I could not get a reading across the plug wires. I understand the test to measure from plug wire to plug wire on each coil, correct?

-Mark

When it lost power, did the main fuse blow?

[mvalenti]

Blown Main....It might have, cant recall. Lets say, it did....

Koolaid, unscrew? rubber boots? I thought they were held in place by friction, boot to wire jacket, or something... or are you talking about the little metal piece inside the boot, Part that makes electrical contact with the plug?

-Thanks,

Mark

[Steve]

The spark plug caps screw onto the spark plug wires.

The contact that touches the spark plug is part of the cap and not easily removable.

.

[koolaid_kid]

While it is true that there are rubber boots on the part that screws onto the wire and the part that fits on the plug, those are mainly for weatherproofing, not for keeping things on.

[1948man]

Trimming the wires is sound advice but if you want a quick check for an indication, pop of the rubber part at the extreme bottom of the plug cap. Then you can get your meter probe in to a good contact more easily and may get some reading. Make sure your meter is set to the right range if it doesn't auto-range.

[mvalenti]

ok, now I understand what you mean when you unscrew wires. I also managed to get 3 of the 4 caps out of the boots along with little ceramic looking posts.... 2 of the 3 were BLACK and sooty and trimmed all 4 wires. Im cleaning caps now. I shoved my test leads into the wires where the cap used to be and measured 12.36K ohms..... Coil time?

I also noticed that the wires were cracking in a few spots. How hard is it to replace? I already fixed the primary wire side on one. Can I get caps and boots at the local autozone and trim to fit?

[koolaid_kid]

There are threads discussing digging the wires out of the coils. It really sounds like your wires and caps are bad, not your coils. Black and sooty can mean that sparks were jumping.
If you can dig the wires out, you can buy a generic wire set at the local auto parts. I purchased two wires from Auto Zone and replaced them on another bike. A couple of caveats: since they are for autos, you need to screw the little silver caps back on the plugs, and they are resistance wires so no NGK caps required.
Or you can buy Dyna wires from places like Z1 and they will also work. Dealer's choice.

[ratznfragn]

O'reilly Auto Parts sells copper core (Non-resistance) wire by the foot,seems like I paid about .70 per foot a couple of months ago.

[koolaid_kid]

You can use either kind, it does not matter. You also do not actually have to use resistive caps or wires either; this was done to lessen ignition noise in car radios.

[mvalenti]

Thanks guys. I'll be picking some wires up this weekend hopefully.