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tx4726 wrote: I am fully aware of the dangers of starting fluid and have used it for 40+ years on diesels, irrigation motors cars and trucks. There are times for its use. Its probably safer in an aerosol spray can than a plastic squirt bottle that sprays gas all over in the case of back fire. That is all beside the point and subject to opinions. Regardless, the bike wouldn't even fire on starting fluid so that indicates that it probably isn't fuel related. Agree?

First, I'm not trying to insult your intellegence, that's not my style. I just try to help with the best information that I've acquired over my 50 years of working on motors. Please don't take my comment the wrong way. I've just experienced more bad luck due to ether use than good luck and I've yet to see any advantage to using ether except on diesels in extremely cold weather. I hear your point on squirting gas and don't disagree with your comment regarding spilled gas and a fire if a backfire happens. What I like about the spray bottle is if it fires and is running with a bit of a stumble, you can keep it going with the spray bottle until it resumes under its own power.
With regard to your question. If the spark plugs have carbon tracking on them and they are wet and you have high compression in that 130-160 psi range, it's possible that the spark is tracking down the center insulator to the base of the sparkplug which is ground. So in effect no "spark" although the timing light will see change in voltage and indicate a spark. The "spark" will seek the least line of resistance. The higher the compression the higher the resistance. If you ever used the old Champion spark plug cleaners with the tester you'd know what I mean. You could install the sparkplug into a test chamber which you could add pressurized air to and actually see at what air pressure the sparkplug failed. I digress.

Hope this helps. Looking forward to hearing your resolve.

LareNurminen wrote: Starter fluid pros and cons. I agree that if you try to start a faulty engine with loads of ether, you can damage it. But starting a kz engine with a small dose which vaporizes itself on its way through the airbox can not hurt a working engine.
If ether + air hurts the engine and washes away the oil, would the fuel + air mixture not do the same?

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Agreed Lare, you can also wash away the film of oil on the cylinders with an extremely flooded engine. I've seen that to. When I worked at the car dealership back in the 70's on a bitter cold morning, cars would show up at the shop on the back of a tow truck and we'd bring them in and figure out what was going on. First, we start at the tailpipe and sniff for gas. If it stunk of raw gas we knew we needed to pull the sparkplugs and check them first. Quite often a fresh set of plugs would get the car going, but sometimes the compression was so low we would have to pull the plugs again and squirt a teaspoon of oil down each cylinder, flip the engine over 20 or 30 revolutions, replace the sparkplugs and try again. That usually did the trick.
We're kinda getting off track here on TX4726's topic so I'll shut up now. Hoping he gets it all sorted out

Are you using new spark plugs? If not try again with new ones.

Plugs are new as are the coils, and plug wires. Carbs are in the cleaning solution. When I took them apart today, they looked clean as new, put them in cleaner to soak overnight. I'm still in the dark on the coils and could use some guidance... I'm getting battery voltage on both sides (primary) of the coil and I don't see any fluctuation while I crank it. Yet the timing light flashing indicates a sparking signal going to the plugs. I fully understand points and condensers but not so much on electronic ignitions. Thanks for your input, guys. This thing is about to drive me bonkers.

It's quite normal to get that 12v both sides when it's not running and the not seeing a fluctuation when cranking, are you using a digital meter as they don't respond to pulses very quickly, try a conventional meter with a needle and you will see a small dip when cranking.
Check that the firing order is correct as in your coils are correctly connected. They all may be sparking but is it in the right places. DAMHIK to look for that.

Was very careful to connect the yellow , blue, green and black wires to the correct coils. I am concerned that the ignition module may have issues.