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This is one that WiredGeorge could probably help me with. Here's the story.... Just purchased a 1983 KZ 1100 Spectre. It was running just fine for about 200 miles and suddenly noticed a loss of power. Was traveling between 65-70 miles an hour the entire time on the interstate with a gas stop in between. Pulled over and noticed that both of the coils had melted at the bottom wire connector i.e. the connection for wire to cylinder 4 on the left coil and the connection for wire to cylinder 2 on the right. The bike died at the end of the off ramp. Thereafter, engine would turn over just fine but would not start. The brand name on the coils is Tec. In short: what would cause a this to happen and any recommendation with respect to replacing them and is there a specific Accel coil and wire set I should be using for this bike?

And yes, it was the most wonderful 200 miles on a KZ to date.

Help. Anyone?

When you say melted, do you think it is temperature from the engine's heat or heat from electrical energy? You think the coils insulation just gave out internally? Or was there a large heat buildup that caused it? I wonder if an over-charging condition could cause this?

Electrical energy. The plastic melted from the bottom sides of both coils were the wires connected to the coil. When I stopped the engine was not really hot. Overcharging...do you mean bad rectifier?

Hi Yzr 1, welcome to the forum.

Is TEC not the original manufacturer of Kawasaki OEM ignition coils?

If so, these could be the original with about 24 years of use and they may simply have died of old age. Again, if these are the originals then they seem to have failed in a manner that caused an internal short circuit which over heated and melted the coil assembly.

In this case the solution would be to swap in new coils. I got mine from Z1 Enterprise for expert advise, price and speed of delivery.

What about the KZ1000 owners here... is TEC the brand name of your stock coils. If not, please ignore all of the above.

Could you add your year, model and location in your signature to get the best responses here.

Best of success and let us know what you found.

Yzr 1 wrote:

Overcharging...do you mean bad rectifier?

Well maybe. It might not be a bad thing to check before you install new coils.It would be a bad thing to fry them too.

Thinking it's unusual for both coils to fail simultaneously absent some outside influence.

Rectifier just converts AC current from alternator into DC current which the bike uses for chassis and ignition electrics. Don't know if rectifier failure would cause coil to melt -- but don't think so (could be wrong).

I would suspect the voltage regulator or some defective wiring or loose connections, whereby too much voltage is being supplied to the coils. But could be wrong about this also.

Hoping someone with more knowledge about this will add better information.

In any event, should address and correct problem before installing and also possibly ruining new coils.

With good battery, engine running, voltage across battery terminals should read 12-13 volts at idle speed, and 14-15 volts at 4000 rpm.

Good Luck!

Would assure good battery ground wire connection at the battery post and at the other end wherever it connects to frame and/or engine. Sometimes the terminals simply corrode and break away from the ground wire.

Am uncertain about the theory involved, but seem to recall that without proper battery grounding, the regulator allows excessive voltage to the coils and chassis electrics.

Good Luck!

Per your suggestions, I confirmed that the battery is well grounded and that I am at about 14.5 volts at 3,500 rpms.

The charging voltage across battery terminals seems okay.

Perhaps the previous owner had installed replacement coils with the wrong ohm requirements. For instance, maybe 2.2 ohm coils were used instead of 3 ohm coils.

In any event, should be certain the new coils are correct for your bike. Suggest confirming this with Z1E when ordering. Would also order new Dyna spark plug wires which come already equipped with caps attached. Being unconcerned with audio interference, I prefer the solid wire core version in lieu of the resistor style plug wires.

Good Luck!

Thanks for all of your insight. I will keep you posted with developments.

The 1100 uses ~ 1.8 - 2.8 Ohm coils. The TEC coils were OEM and since they fried, you will FIRST have to get new ones. You can replace the OEM coils with either Accel or Dyna coils. The Dyna coils are a tad smaller and mount better. Z1Enterprises.com can sell you the proper application.

You will have to get the bike running once again which means new coils. This is a bit tricky since the old coils fried. The thing that fried them MIGHT be shorts in either the primary or secondary windings but it seems real unlikely that both coils would fail at the same time so I would expect another issue caused the OEM coils to fry... that would be a bad regulator/rectifier. I think you have a combo unit on your bike located on the left side of the battery box.

Since you are spending a bucket of money for the new coils, I would spend a bit more and just replace the reg/rec as well. You can do some testing on the reg/rec prior to firing the bike up (which would be a real good idea if you don't want to buy a new reg/rec right from the get-go)...

Remove your left sidecover and disconnect the 6-pin connector from the reg/rec. Put your multi-meter on Ohms in 10X scale. Measure the resistance between all three yellow leads and the white/red lead. Measure between each yellow lead and the black lead. There will be six combos of readings. Write them down as you do it. Reverse the meter polarity; that is switch the probes around and repeat the tests. There should be ten times as much resistance in one direction as the other. If any of the tests shows the SAME resistance regardless of how you have the probes placed, the reg/rec is toast.

I would think that you would have fried/burnt light bulbs as well as fried coils... check them as well because if there was extra voltage enough to fry coils it will also smoke light bulbs.

Once you get the new parts installed, start the bike and and check voltage at your battery using your multimeter at idle and at 4K rpm... you should see a bit over 12VDC at idle and just under 15VDC at 4K rpm. If there is more or less, you have a bad connector in the charging system or will need to check your generator.