TOPIC:

'83 KZ1100 Spectre. Have a thread going on it in carbs, but have also found that one coil is not firing. I have not had time to fully diagnose it all yet, but need to trace the coil primary wires, have reason to think that they might have a problem. What connector would I find the four coil primaries coming from? Guessing the CDI, or whatever ignition box this bike has would be the next place I could find a plug to check wire continuity, but don't know.

DGA wrote: '83 KZ1100 Spectre. Have a thread going on it in carbs, but have also found that one coil is not firing. I have not had time to fully diagnose it all yet, but need to trace the coil primary wires, have reason to think that they might have a problem. What connector would I find the four coil primaries coming from?.

On my 750, it's a power feed coming from the 20A main fuse after the ignition switch.

Ideally, voltage being received at the coil primary winding terminal should match the voltage as measured across the battery terminals.









Good Fortune!

What does your manual say?
Steve

On all of mine, the IC ignitior box has two 4 way miniblock connectors. One from the pick ups, the other to the coils through the main wiring loom.

Try swapping the coils to diagnose this better/

Wow thanks for the diagrams and help guys. it was late last night, but I swapped a lot of stuff around, original owner, that the bike never ran for, had plug wires on wrong plugs, and wrong pickups to wrong coils. Happened that he had ONE plug wire on right so the #1 cylinder would fire at the right time, well prob 180 out, and it will idle on that cylinder alone, all other cylinders dead, exhaust headers stone cold. Will diagnose it better today with this info and a non tired brain.

The coil charges while battery voltage through its coil's primary winding is grounded through points or whatever ignition.

The purpose of the points or whatever ignition is to ground and un-ground the coil's primary winding.

For example, with a correctly functioning ignition system, when the points are closed, the coil's primary winding is grounded, which allows the coil to "charge."
When the points open, the coil's primary winding becomes un-grounded.
Such un-grounding is the event that causes the coil to fire high tension voltage throughout the secondary loop, thus discharging the coil and firing both spark plugs in the process.

Would suggest studying the above diagram -- slowly and with feeling -- until it makes sense and sinks in.
An understanding of how a healthy ignition is supposed to function is usually helpful toward diagnosing and pin-pointing the ignition component that's faulty in the bike at hand.
There are many possible reasons for ignition failure, But whatever the reason, it's usually due to something amiss in the system as diagrammed above.

Good Fortune!

Good Fortune!

DGA wrote: Wow thanks for the diagrams and help guys. it was late last night, but I swapped a lot of stuff around, original owner, that the bike never ran for, had plug wires on wrong plugs, and wrong pickups to wrong coils. Happened that he had ONE plug wire on right so the #1 cylinder would fire at the right time, well prob 180 out, and it will idle on that cylinder alone, all other cylinders dead, exhaust headers stone cold. Will diagnose it better today with this info and a non tired brain.

Now that explains it. You just got the bike? One more reason PO's suck.
Steve

Wow this thing was worse than I thought. He also had the coil wires swapped left to right, and one coil wired positive to negative etc. Coils were loose on the bike and are a new coil that he had to drill new holes to mount. I saw something about that here somewhere, some from Ebay maybe? So, it now runs and rides on two or three at times, cylinders. Cylinder one has no spark and cylinder three a weak spark. But those are different coils so I do have both systems working. About the new coils, do they come with plug wires in them or not? I have a feeling that he used the old plug wires and they are not contacting inside on those two dead cylinders.

The OEM Kawi coils came with the plug wires attached and molded into the coil. Some aftermarket come with wires but most do not so you can change or replace plug wires in those.

All mine have screw off wire retainers with a plastic olive, so changing leads is easy.

My GSX1100 had moulded in leads, splicing newlead to old always seemd like a bodge to me.