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Well everyone, gather round to laugh at the dumbass... I started my first fire today.

My ignition coil overheated and the wires running to the points and into the main harness melted and caught fire. The coil body is smoking hot but the plug wires look okay. What happened?

I was laying pretty heavy on the starter because I had just rebuilt the carbs but nothing was happening. Could this have caused it to overheat?

I should also admit that I had a 50 amp starter hooked up to the bike to keep the battery going. This seems like an obvious source but I've been doing this for months now with no problem.

Please tell me the <$50 coil just malfunctioned so I can justify buying a better one and moving forward... The wife didn't appreciate the frantic calls for the fire extinguisher...

Buy a battery and coils.
Steve

You should NEVER (yes - NEVER) try to start the bike with a charger or a running vehicle hooked up to the battery. Ed

I should also admit that I had a 50 amp starter hooked up to the bike to keep the battery going. This seems like an obvious source but I've been doing this for months now with no problem.

Do you mean 50A charger? That's a quite a bit too much for a little bitty mc battery.

The Care and Feeding of your Pet Battery
Charging higher than 2 amps causes battery overheating & with the ignition switch ON probably overheats the ignition coils as well when using the 50A charger.

A 1,000 amp charger would have been even faster! Ed