Debugging no spark

[Texas Don]

Eric,
You've got an igniter which is solid state. I ride an older '79 which still has mechanical points. Everything else that I said still flies except that you can't visually check for opening and closing. Have you tried charging your battery to insure that it's full. See BassCliff's posting in this thread also. Excellent troubleshooting procedure for your solid state ignition.
Don

[emschwar]

Hi,

• Ignition coil resistance:
  Between the two HT plug caps of the same coil, secondary HT winding, approximately 30 – 35 K ohm
  Between the orange/white and white on the first coil and orange/white and black/yellow on the second coil, primary winding, approximately 2-5 ohm. If this test is within limits you likely have two good coils.

I got 5 ohms on the primaries, but infinity on the secondaries of both coils. Does this mean both my coils are bad? It seems... well, unlikely, at least.

-=Eric

[lucabond]

What was scale range did you have your meter set to when you checked the secondaries ? You would have to set it to a higher range to check the secondaries or it will just show infinitiy.
When you checked the negitive side of the coils for ground you should be looking for ohms not voltage and the only time it would show ground would
be when the points were closed or the electonic ignition grounded them so the motor would have to be running so thats not a good way to test them unless you had points and turned the crank by hand.
Most bikes I have seen have an orange/white that gives the power to the coils not orange/black so not sure about that.
You can check the coils by running a temp wire from the battery + to the + side of the coils and a second wire from the - side of the coils and touch it to ground while you watch your plug for a spark which is what the ignition does but much faster. Test both coils if you get spark you have a wiring problem.
Good luck

[emschwar]

What was scale range did you have your meter set to when you checked the secondaries ? You would have to set it to a higher range to check the secondaries or it will just show infinitiy.

My multimeter has scales at 200, 2k, 20k, and 200k ohms; I tried it with 20k and 200k, and got nothing.

When you checked the negitive side of the coils for ground you should be looking for ohms not voltage and the only time it would show ground would
be when the points were closed or the electonic ignition grounded them so the motor would have to be running so thats not a good way to test them unless you had points and turned the crank by hand.

Yeah, I did that wrong. Given that I have an electronic ignition, how can I test the negative side of the coils for ground? Or can I?

Most bikes I have seen have an orange/white that gives the power to the coils not orange/black so not sure about that.
You can check the coils by running a temp wire from the battery + to the + side of the coils and a second wire from the - side of the coils and touch it to ground while you watch your plug for a spark which is what the ignition does but much faster. Test both coils if you get spark you have a wiring problem.

I'll try that, thanks. It's quite possible my positive wires are just plain dirty, and they only *look* orange/black.

-=Eric

[OldVet66]

My bike is a '78 GS1000E, but I was checking the wiring where there was a bundle of bullet connectors near the battery, and noticed one that was blackened under the semi transparent covering. It would not come apart. Looking farther, I found about six connectors in the same condition. I just ordered enough connectors to replace them all before the wiring harness starts frying. It sounds to me like you fixed one problem and now it's affecting a critical connection that is in bad shape somewhere else. If you go through them all you will most likely find a connection that is now breaking down under load and almost burnt through where the connection is made. Someone on the forum posted this site up recently, and I got enough connectors to do the whole bike and then some for pocket change. http://easternbeaver.com/Main/Elec__...FKWH/fkwh.html