Connectors need a special crimping tool and a little bit of training/experience. My ST4S ran on one pot for 18 month and it turned out to be the loom.
Do you coils have a fly lead on them or does what appears to be the loom connect straight to the coil?
I think this might be a direct replacement? https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.co.uk/ulk/itm/174150443938
the loom connects to the coil using that Bosch type fitting.If you buy the ebay one how would you connect that up? looks like the other one is in bits to crimp and set up.strip back the wires first (take battery out)? thanks for all the replies,this is very helpful.
First of all, have you had a closer look at connector female on flying lead? you need to be reasonably confident that you have found the culprit** before dismantling the connector body/spade terminals. As Northern Monkey has said, you are looking for signs of green deposit on contact faces. With the coil assy removed, how easy does connector "plug in" to position? it should feel quite firm as it clasps the male parts of the connectors. A photo of yours might help. If you decide that it is the culprit, and you have enough slack in the lead to strip and prepare the wire ends afresh, then you could get a replacement connector but you will need to be at home with fairly intricate soldering and careful crimping with small pliers. Often the problem with doing it this knife-and-fork way is that the metal connector won't slide into the plastic body because it is now bulkier than intended due to soldering/crimping not being as compact as it should be. It's never put me off but you could carry on investigating and buy the correct crimping tool for the job etc. The proper tools are often expensive but again, there are aftermarket equivalents of these but you run the risk of them not doing the job as well so could be a waste of time and money. Other options:- I think I can guess but @Northan Monkey can confirm - only if ** but as hinted at, you could remove each miniature spade terminal, remembering which wire goes to which, and then you can carefully painstakingly clean each spade (and possibly carefully crimp a little tighter if fit has become too loose) to achieve good contact and then just attach each spade without the plastic body being careful to avoid shorting by possibly insulating with self amalgamating tape etc if necessary***. A cruder option is to get a flying lead made up with a new connector at one end and then splice the wire ends onto your existing loom ends after removing old connector. Have a search for YouTube videos on crimping re-attaching connectors - I can't recommend any and some are Mickey Mouse I warn you, but a cross-section of them all will be helpful. *** this is only a temporary fix and possibly won't be much good in the wet again but at least it will confirm whether you have cured the problem. (or not!)
So you have the old type coils.....get a pair of later type coils then you can cut the existing loom connector right back in a dry bit as the later coil has a fly lead on it
So...i got a new Bosch coil fitting,The old wiring did have a little nick in the blue wire when i unwrapped it. Also,the old connector did not fit very well.I had to carfeully crimp those wires and join the two cut parts of the blue wire.All well and good...snic.. However.same problem...fires up lovely on two and then after half a minute goes to one. THEN.I finally figured out how to get the error code,which shows as 10.2. This means Horizontal Coil shorted to Earth! well,that sound like my problem right there,so how would i go about putting that right,being a not very electrically minded person but having old bits of wire and a decent tool kit.
This is ths coils i have,not sure if they are old or new type,joined the wiring fine,coils are both OK as they both work on the vertical cylinder fine.
Do you not read any of the above....? thats a really old type coil that they superseded pretty much around 2004/5 given the shoit around it there you perhaps ought to frame as it lasted this long.... Are you really in the isle of skye?
here's one with a bit more light,new connector fitted with rubber boot etc.the Bike looks nasty under there but she has only done 10k miles.
personally id get a later type pair of coils have the battery box off and check the loom for chafing, cut the loom back as far as i could and refit the connector back as far as the fly lead would reach...
yes Andy,i did read the suggestion to swap out the coils,but they were both working fine so why would i do that? can they both be shorting only on the front cylinder? Not a cheap fix then.And yes,i do live on Skye,its a bit more remote when this happens.
that's a pity it didn't work, if you are happy with the new connector and your wiring at the plug then as said, time to check the loom run further up the line plus ECU and it's connector.
Going to suggest something easy but might seem silly that cured a long term problem on my multistrada 1000 that liked to run on 1 cylinder . Pull out the neutral lead from the switch & earth it directly to engine (I earthed mine to clutch cover bolt) then try , neutral lead had corroded under the insulation so looked ok but earthed badly . Mine used to be a nightmare but has run like a dream since I did this .Might not work but a easy thing to try
You can get the later coils with flylead s/h on eBay quite cheaply. They improved them at least twice. If it were me Id replace the plug too
