No spark!

Hi all,

I decided to see if there was spark.... and there was none. Not at any of the plugs.

Checked the power to the coils whilst cranking... none. Checked ground to the coils and there was good ground.

Checked the power to the igniter whilst cranking (yellow/red wire)... there was power, even before cranking. Checked the ground to the igniter and there was good ground.

One of the wires going from the igniter to the coils (green) was frayed (glad I checked more thoroughly as I would never have found that, hidden behind the black cable sleeve), so I checked there for power whilst cranking... there was none. But then I did a continuity test on that wire and it was grounding....??? No idea if it is grounding through the particular coil or the igniter, but as none of the coils got power, I suspect the igniter.

Further info after reading the manual. I checked the resistance using my multimeter, whose lowest setting is 200K. When connecting any of the pick up coil terminals with the battery earth wire the reading fluctuates between 0.2 and 0.3. If I connect any of the leads coming from the pick up coil and battery earth NOTHING happens, reader doesn't even flicker and stays at 1. (leads gone?)

Page 238 has a schematic for checking.... It states after 3; "sparks jump across needles"... what needles?

Looking at page 243 igniter testing (with igniter connected to the bike - so not a bench test):
- Green wire to ground reads 240, whichever way my tester is connected
- Red/Yellow to ground, no reading
No readings at all on any of the pins on the smaller 6-pin connector.

Pick-up coils fubar? Or maybe the leads from PU coil to igniter fubar?
Is the igniter fubar? How do I check to make sure?

Paul

P.s. did I mention that I hate electrics?! :pinch:

The igniter opens and closes the ground side of the ignition coils to make the spark, so the first question is-

Have you checked to confirm battery power to the coils through the ballast resistor? Yellow wire with a red tracer feeds battery power to the ballast resistor so whatever battery voltage is, you should read battery voltage on that yellow wire/red tracer at the ballast resistor.
Coming out of the ballast resistor will be a reduced voltage to the 3 terminals with pink wires that feed voltage to the 3 ignition coils . Should be around 8 volts.(+ positive terminal)
At this point you could remove the 3 wires from the negative terminals of the ignition coils and using a test wire and jump between the negative coil terminal and briefly ground the test lead( tap the test wire on and off of ground producing a spark when the lead is removed from ground.) That would confirm the primary ignition circuit, coil and secondary ignition (spark plug wire, resistor cap and spark plug.

Thanks Kawboy.

Morning,

There is 13.1V at the yellow/red when ignition on. There is nothing at the green wire, cranking or not. Nothing at any of the other two coil wires either.

I have AW82 TRI cols with 2.4 resistance each, and no ballast resistor.

So Igniter out: Black/Yellow goes to ground, Yellow/Red comes straight from the battery (through the M-Unit which operates as the ignition switch). The three blue/green/black wires go to the + side of the coils and the - side of those go to ground (chassis).

Looking at the wiring diagram,... I think I wired the coils wrong. Rather than earthing them at the negative pole, these should be connected to the Yellow/red battery feed.

That would be... DOH!

Can anyone confirm before I connect and maybe blow something up??

Paul

3 x Coil Feeds from CDI Unit are GREEN / BLACK / BLUE for 2 cylinders each.

3 x PINK Feeds which come from Ballast Resistor are + feeds.
The Ballast Resistor is fed with ONE YELLOW feed.

So...........it you have removed Ballast Resistor, you now need 3 feeds from the one YELLOW wire...............one to each coil.

DO NOT CONNECT ANY OF THE COILS DIRECTLY TO EARTH / FRAME !!!!!


Hope that helps ?

Pete

The yellow /red feeds power to the + terminal of the coils to power the coils. That Yellow/Red and also feeds power to the igniter so that the transistors (switches) in the igniter can turn on/off the ground side of the coils to produce the spark.
The blue wire for #1#6 coil, the Red wire for #2#5 coil and Green wire for #3#4 coil are attached to the - terminal of the coils. These 3 wires are connected to the igniter. Inside the igniter, these 3 wires are connected to the transistors which turn on/off these 3 wires to ground to produce the spark.

Ok, so that was a DOH moment. Apologies, and thank you!

I shall rewire and try again.

Paul