voltage loss to coils!>!???

[snowbeard]

Hey guys,

so I've been trying to clean my wiring on the 850 to get spark. the story so far...

got the bike, supposed electrical issues. tried the starter upon replacing carbs, engine turns over and starter sounds strong. but even with ether I get no response.

so I pull the plugs and look for spark. no spark on any of them. start pulling wires out one by one and cleaning the connections. looked at the igniter first, got all it's six wires in and out (signal generator in, orange and white, white, black and white, etc out) checked on the signal generator, but don't really know how to best test this. my friend Ty said you can just short the generators with a screwdriver to get your spark, but I got nothing? either way, I at least established continuity to the igniter.

then I started checking the voltages across the system, and it seems that on the battery side of the fusebox I get ~12.5V (no runny, no chargy, charged at checkers, now just using it to establish connections for now)

so by the time I find my common orange/white wire on the far side of the fusebox from the battery, I'm down to 11.8V this is the same to the starter switch, and the leads to the coils.

after all this monkeying I tried to get spark last night and got it on the 2/3 coil, but there is no difference in voltage going to it than the 1/4.

so my question would be, where else might this orange/white wire run that I need to clean?

and/or, how else might I be losing spark on 1/4??

I think for now I'd like to just get spark to all the plugs and see what else is in need of help before i redo the entire wiring harness...

thanks!!!

[Billy Ricks]

You should be able to jump the wires in and out of the signal generators to see if you get spark If you do then the ignitor is less suspect. You could always find a way to swap leads off the signal generator for 2/3 to 1/4 to see if 1/4 fires that way. If it does then the signal generator for 1/4 is suspect.

As for testing the signal generators, measure the resistance between the two wires on each pickup. You should get somewhere around 130-200 ohms. If the resistance is infinity or less than spec they are shot.

[snowbeard]

hmmm.

so my igniter has only the two wires coming from the generator, and I haven't figured out what's connected to what... the generator has a red wire molded into the plastic on the pickup that connects the two pickups, as well as the blue wire from one and the green wire from the other... I can't get into the wires to check red-green or red-blue. and they are soldered right onto the ignitor...

could I maybe just jump one of the generator wires to ground? (I've been afraid to jump anything to ground that I don't know should be...)


perhaps my lucky day, I just found what looks like an 850 carcass in the dumpster out back of the salvage yard, with coils, reg/rec and a few other pieces! going back after finishing up work here to strip that thang!!!

thanks again!!!

[Billy Ricks]

You should have a plug somewhere in the harness that connects between the ignitor and the generators. That would be the place to jump the leads to see if the ignitor fires the plugs.

[SqDancerLynn1]

The voltage drop on the orange wire to 11.8 ?? Check for a voltage drop across the ign switch