No spark diagnostics

Kudos for trying, always painful to learn electrics, especially on open forum.
Also kudos for knowing when it's time to get  the experts involved.
You will have learned a few things from this experience, some of them even positive.  8) :-*
 
Ok so I know I said I'm finished but whilst it's still early...

Have plugged in both mine and Bears box and managed to get them both to work, sparking from both coils.  :'(

So clearly there is something else at work here so doesn't change the fact I need to take it in.
 
Hot coils would seem to indicate there is a partial earth of the coils directly to the frame rather than through the ignition/plugs.. As coils warm up they become less efficient and that's when they ((literally) break down..
 
I'm out of my league in this company but the topic interests me so here goes. (I hope I'm not suggesting how you should suck eggs.) When I had a non starting issue recently I followed each wire, starting at the voltage regulator. I broke and cleaned each connection including switches and made many repairs. Along the way I learned a lot about the wiring plan and reversed modifications others had made.

Things I found included many of the connections were badly corroded, wires were damaged, in some cases severed, and many of the modifications were simply lazy fixes that only added to confusion.


Burning plastic is what you get when a wire is carrying too much current. If your system is correctly wired, a fuse should catch a current overload and prevent that happening. So whatever your problem is, your power supply seems not to be fused correctly. (Or current is not traveling along the paths it is meant to follow). Have you checked you have the correct fuses. A blown fuse could help you narrow the diagnostics.

One cause of current overload is bad earthing. A number of guys have already suggested you could be looking at an earth problem. If it cannot make its way to ground the intended way, current will often find some unintended way. In that situation you can get inconsistent symptoms because electricity looks for the easiest path, not the same path. It can decide to take a path along a wire that was not intended to carry the amperage. Result: burning plastic.  Other causes of burning plastic include damaged wires and connections and fitting incorrectly specified components. (An unfused relay supplying a 100w headlight bulb for example).

If you can identify whether the burning plastic is a wire burning in the loom or a device on the loom, that would be a helpful clue. Even the general location of the smell is a starting point.

Usually a faulty component will die if it is overloaded. It wont just keep heating up. On the hand, a wire in the loom will keep heating up. Coils do get hot when the ignition is on.

Your electrician will usually follow a procedure like I described. If it gets too tough he'll often start grafting in new wires. Its a solution that invariably makes diagnosis harder later.
Good luck
 
Ye something is definitely wrong, probably a loose/bad wire becuase now it's not doing it. It was the coils heating up a lot. I will get the bike properly looked at next week.
 
I know half running doesn't count but here you go..

https://youtu.be/fI67bXCwrq8

There was spark from both but it was week on the double coil.
 
Blimey treoleileagh! Where were you 10 pages ago?

Exactly what I would have done and DID do with my bike, take each cable off in turn and check/clean every single connection.

Fuses are there to protect the wiring, not usually the components.
Simple reason - the wiring should be the weakest link.
 
SimonR501 said:
Blimey treoleileagh! Where were you 10 pages ago?

Exactly what I would have done and DID do with my bike, take each cable off in turn and check/clean every single connection.

Fuses are there to protect the wiring, not usually the components.
Simple reason - the wiring should be the weakest link.
Click to expand...

See reply #95, 5 pages ago.  :LOL:
 
cbertozz said:
Damn we thought you'd be asleep by now  :-*
Click to expand...

Us old farts stay up late. And this old fart will be riding his Laverda this weekend.  :-*
 
making a video of the test page provides no clues what so ever

post a shot of the first page, Miscellaneous, want to see what the dwell settings are for the coil as you should not be seeing a "stored dwell setting error" though I have never looked at the test page when the engine is running, I always watch the Advance Map page
 
Some basic ignition info ...

Normal wiring of coils is a +12V feed directly to the coil. The other side of the coil is wired to earth via the timed switching provided by the ignition system.

Think of a points-type ignition system. When the points are closed, the coil is powered up and there's current flowing. Points open, no current. If the engine is stopped at a position where the points happen to be closed and the ignition is switched on, current will flow through the coil and it will get hot. Quite hot.

Some electronic ignition systems will do the same thing. The default switching is coils powered up until signals start coming from the pickups to tell the system when to switch the coils off and on. The Dyna system on my Guzzi is like that. Leave the ignition on for a while and the coils start to cook. Stupid way to build an electronic ignition system in my opinion.

However, Ignitech systems are a bit smarter. Their default is to leave the coils un-energised until the engine is cranked, so the coils shouldn't heat up when the ignition is switched on with the engine not running.

So why are your coils cooking? it's highly unlikely that both the ignition boxes you've tried have the same fault, so we can assume a wiring problem. For some reason the switched (negative) side of the coil is getting a path to earth that's independent of the ignition system (as AndyW suggested). This could also explain your weak spark. You're not getting the full voltage drop at the coil when the ignition system interrupts the primary current.

Look for bad insulation or incorrect wiring between coils and ignition system.



 
Dellortoman said:
Some basic ignition info ...

Normal wiring of coils is a +12V feed directly to the coil. The other side of the coil is wired to earth via the timed switching provided by the ignition system.

Think of a points-type ignition system. When the points are closed, the coil is powered up and there's current flowing. Points open, no current. If the engine is stopped at a position where the points happen to be closed and the ignition is switched on, current will flow through the coil and it will get hot. Quite hot.

Some electronic ignition systems will do the same thing. The default switching is coils powered up until signals start coming from the pickups to tell the system when to switch the coils off and on. The Dyna system on my Guzzi is like that. Leave the ignition on for a while and the coils start to cook. Stupid way to build an electronic ignition system in my opinion.

However, Ignitech systems are a bit smarter. Their default is to leave the coils un-energised until the engine is cranked, so the coils shouldn't heat up when the ignition is switched on with the engine not running.

So why are your coils cooking? it's highly unlikely that both the ignition boxes you've tried have the same fault, so we can assume a wiring problem. For some reason the switched (negative) side of the coil is getting a path to earth that's independent of the ignition system (as AndyW suggested). This could also explain your weak spark. You're not getting the full voltage drop at the coil when the ignition system interrupts the primary current.

Look for bad insulation or incorrect wiring between coils and ignition system.
Click to expand...

So much to learn.

However riddle me this:

The intermittent issue in terms of the engine running has been isolated to the single coil. Double coil fires, single doesn't.

When I swap the trigger wires coming directly from the ECU so there is no other wiring in between the ECU and the change, then the single coil works and the double doesn't.

In my simplistic brain this means there is a problem with the connection on that short piece of wiring for the yellow trigger wire, or its something related to that wire inside the 20 pin, or inside the box itself.

The previous bad earth from the loose wire in the relay was maybe a seperate issue that was masking this.

Anyway as I can't take bike in until.next week I'm taking the ECU and wiring to an Auto electrician today.

EDIT: Auto electrician opinion: not the wiring, bad earth. Yes ok I know that's been said many times. So roll on next week.
 
Looking at the rats nest under the seat I would start there. If the wiring in the headlamp shell is of similar quality then that would be next.
And if you go that far I would pay someone to renew the whole lot. That and your new ignition system would be the best things you could do to make it a sweet reliable ride in the short term.
 
The only bit of the underseat I haven't checked is bypassing the main relay altogether and pulling of the regulator to see how it's been wired up.
 
Bypassed main relay...No dice.

All the main earths are solidly attached. The collection of earths from the ignition, regulator etc are all connected to a central earth and the frame has been exposed and they are secure.

The coils are attached solidly to the frame but will remove and check just in case.
 
So single coil is getting hot , double coil stone cold. (Not both like last time)

New weirdness - I have a voltmeter on the battery and it is showing the batter charging even though no charger is attached? That's got to be a clue?

When I turn the bike on the voltage drops almost 10v instantly like the drain on it is massive.


 
I know NOTHING but that never stopped me before, maybe try connecting that combined frame earth to the battery earth, run a cable between them. What I don't get is it was going, WHAT CHANGED other than no go.
Recon you have gone as far as asking here can help from a distance
 
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