82 GS450 No Spark Right Side

[magrugger82]

I have a 1982 GS450T that I bought not running and pretty torn apart. I put the wiring back together and I got it to turn over but with no spark at all. I re checked all of my connections and ended up deciding it was a bad CDI box. I replaced the CDI box with a used one from a scrap yard and once hooked up I was able to get spark but only to the left plug. If I switch the wires from the left coil to the right coil I can get a weak spark there but then not on the other side. Can half of a CDI box be faulty? Any other Ideas?

[BassCliff]

Greetings and Salutations!!

Hi Mr. magrugger82,

Yes, half of the "ignitor" can be bad. And yes, one of the coils can be bad. It could also be faulty wiring on one side of the ignition. Every connection and ground needs to be checked and cleaned. You'll find lots of troubleshooting tips in the electrical section of my little website.

If you are here you probably have a 30 year old motorcycle that needs about 20 years worth of maintenance. You'll find all kinds of helpful tips, procedures, manuals, diagrams, "how-to" guides, etc, in the links below. Let's get started.

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[pete]

Hey mate, welcome! Cliff's got it right there, but you also need to check the spark plug caps are good as well. They're cheap to replace with NGK ones and will give you weak/no spark if the resistance is too high or they're not conducting properly.

[magrugger82]

Thanks guys, I tripple checked all of my connections and I even did the ignition box test with a 1.5V dry cell battery and confirmed that one side of the ignition box is bad. Now on to the front brakes

[Redman]

......... If I switch the wires from the left coil to the right coil I can get a weak spark there but then not on the other side. ...........

a GS450 (of which I have no experience) is a twin cyclinder,right?

The kawasaki 400 twin I had (30 years ago) only had one coil, and sparked both plugs at same time. twice as often as needs to. GS450 have just one coil? or two?

(same as our 4 cyclders bikes have two coils, each that sparks two plugs at a time, twice as often as need to)

I suspect the spark plug caps.
They are removable and are replaceable, and do go bad. Can also measure with ohm meter, should be about 5000 ohms (5K ohms), and go real high ohms or complete open when go bad.

Or could try swapping just the caps (not the wires, just the caps). Pull and twist to get off the wire.

.

[Macmatic]

Any other Ideas?

Have you checked the voltage to the coils? If you're getting much below battery voltage search about doing the "coil relay mod" here on the forum. If you have good voltage to the coils I'd take the boots off the ends of the plug wires, just hold the wire and turn the boots off as if you were unscrewing them...because you are.

You should also have a enough slack in your wires to cut off 1/4 to 1/2in of the cable end, this will give you fresh copper to screw the boot back into. You can also use a flat bladed screwdriver to remove the guts of the plug boot that conduct the electricity and clean up and corrosion there.

But maybe the first thing to do is to take some readings of your coils with a meter. If Cliff's excellent site doesn't have instructions I'm sure it's been covered on the site before, sorry I can't give you the procedure now but as I remember it the tests are simple enough to do with a standard multimeter.