Hi all! This is somewhat of a story but I'm after some help/advice/and prior experience with my issue. Since buying the bike I've had starting and running issues, I thought id found the issue when I noticed one of the carbs wasn't working, I removed had them rebuilt and re fitted, The bike started ok after refitting them (by that I mean to previous carb issue had been resolved) however since then the bike isn't starting. I've had the bike looked at and its been diagnosed as the ignition system, the pick up the coils and the igniter boxes. has anyone experienced what seems like a catastrophic failure of all these parts at once? Also if anyone could help me navigate where to find the parts, the leads and pick ups seem easy enough to find via ebay, but I'm a bit confused by the boxes, either £100 each on ebay or £30 on ali express. and it seems that the coils are even more difficult to find. I'm sure ive missed some detail out but I look forward to getting some advice
"I've had the bike looked at and its been diagnosed as the ignition system, the pick up the coils and the igniter boxes. has anyone experienced what seems like a catastrophic failure of all these parts at once?" Hope you didn't pay money for that diagnosis, and no, I don't think it's possible for so many items to fail at the same time.
The horizontal and vertical cylinders have 2 completely independent ignition systems. The only thing common to both is their power supply. The chances of all components failing simultaneously is very very remote. Replacing every ignition component would be very expensive way of fixing it. Firstly are there sparks at either cylinder? Probably not from your description of the fault. There should be 12V on one terminal of each coil and there should also be 12V going to one of the terminals of each ignitor box, I can't remember which colour wire but it should be obvious. You should also check that all the ground circuits are complete. I can't remember the resistance of the pickups but around 100 ohms rings a bell. The chances of any of the ignition coils failing is very small, let alone both of them. The most likely fault is with the ignitor boxes but the only test is by substitution. I have come across in the past a case where both ignitor boxes had failed by trying jump start the bike from a car with its engine running. The electrical spikes from the car system destroyed the ignitor boxes.
As derek has said it’s a reasonably simple ignition system that is independent on each cylinder. First thing to check for if you have no spark at both plugs is the kill switch ,also there is a small two pin connector at the right side under the fuel tank that supplies power to the ignition so make sure that isn’t disconnected or damaged, check also the fuses but if you’re fuel pump is running that’s supplied by the same fuse Duff spark plugs could be your problem and be aware that there’s a lot of counterfeit ones about, especially NGK !!! There’s a circuit diagram here if you don’t have one already
