Intermittent Ignition woes

[duantro]

The brown dyna coils showed up and without any mounting hardware. Does mottorad elektrik sell the adapter plates for these still? I will try to call them Monday.

[Bamboo812]

Isn't Monday a holiday?

[duantro]

Isn't Monday a holiday?

Damn! You are right. It is a prime riding day also!

[ibjman]

It sounds to me as if the ground to the coils is not "breaking" from the points. The only time he gets a spark is when he shuts of the key and the power through the coils collapses the field. Look for a reason why the coils are "grounded" all the time regardless of when the points open. Fix that short to ground in the circuit to the ground side of the coils.
Regards, Ibjman

[jagarra]

I would check the resistance between the wire going to the points and the wire on the negative side of the coil. Don't have a schematic handy but it should be that wire. If that wire was pinched and always grounded, would that do it?

[Duane Ausherman]

jagarra, that would explain it. We used to see that wire get pinched often by owners and even some mechanics.

I just see too many possibilities to get into this post. In my shop, my mechanics would first duplicate the symptoms, run a couple of very quick tests and isolate the most common errors first. I would be very surprised if it took more than an hour from start to the fixed bike.

If it took that long, I would assign Bryan Hilton to the job. Actually, we couldn't keep him away from any job that failed to show up quickly. He loved a mystery. The whole shop would be watching this one. If duplicating the symptom was unusual, then every employee would ride the bike to get the experience.

Cross training was mandatory except in testing high speed wobbles. I wouldn't allow my employees to risk their life for a job. I did all of those. Once that we knew how bad it was, then they would ride it to see the early warning signs that almost always existed before a full blown wobble.

[duantro]

Ibjman and jagarra, this totally sounds correct, except when I switch from points to the dyna3 this wire is replaced with the dyna wire. I'm going to try to fabricate some metal mount brackets for the new dyna coils and do some testing.
Thanks for all the input.

[jagarra]

Just out of curiosity, when you switched back to points did you leave the dyna wire in place.
I have seen terminals on wires crimped and they only catch the insulation, sometimes they miss the bare wire so cosmeticly it looks OK, but they may flackey. Check the continuity of that wire just for grins.

[duantro]

I was using the original wiring with points and the new wiring with the dyna. I've installed the dyna coils and the same problem is still happening. Unfortunately I've only had a few minutes every now and then to mess with it. I'm going to pull the front cover again and check for grounding at the plate in the morning.

[duantro]

Ok, I finally had a day off, and have found the problem. You were right, I had the dyna ignition sensor wire pinched in the front case and grounding it out. I have fixed it. I don't know why this was happening with points also, unless I had it pinched as well! So my new problem is that since I have single plugged heads, the new brown dual output Dyna coil pair, has 2 extra unconnected plug wire sockets that are arcing to the tank. Did I get sent the wrong ones? Does the extra socket need to be grounded or could I just cover them with a plug wire boot? I'm thinking running just 1 coil would make the impedance off, since the Dyna3 requires 3 ohm load and the brown coils are 1.5 each?
Edit: Temporay solution- I re-installed the 18yrs+ old Bosch Blue coils and it runs like a champ! I'll call Capital Cycle and ask about the possibility of them sending me the wrong coils.
Now time to get some riding in!