Elusive electrical problems (solved)

It has been awhile since I worked on the bike. Although the summer has ended I made some time to continue with this project. I made a bracket for the new Honda coil. I integrated two heatsinks to keep the coil as cool as possible. Next step is increasing the wire thickness of all the ground wires.
new coil mount.jpg
 
Looks interesting. My "adapter" is just a piece of soft steel in the ballpark of an inch by 3/4 (guessing) with two holes. It's between the coil and the frame on the rear end, with the terminals pointing forward. I ground just a bit off of a gusset to let one terminal clear.

On the sites where these are the native coils it seems they worry about vibration instead of heat. They're often in brackets in pairs and there's no connection to metal for heat sinking, just total rubber mounting. Mine is mounted solid but I haven't had any cracking or apparent failure from vibration. Maybe it's luckily stuck in in some vibrational node :)
 
Got most of the ground wires replaced by thicker gauge.

One thing crossed my mind, and i cant really find the answer on the forum: Do is need to have the reg/rec bolted down steel on steel in such a way it is grounded? The black wire coming out of the reg/rec runs to the single point ground but i mounted the RR on a steel part that is rubber mounted. Do I need to ground the RR body as well?
 
It would depend what unit you're using. Stock ones ground through wires, not the case. Aftermarket units can be either way, some need the case grounded, some have a wire instead.
 
hooser...........................I can only recommend what I have personally used. I have been using the Accel #140403S (non CDI) for ten years now. Its 3.3 ohm primary, so when using points you should put a resistor in series with the power lead going to the coil.
I used a NAPA Echlin ICR 23, which is 1.3 ohms. You have to connect both sets of points to the downstream side of the ignition coil,
i.e. both sets of points are in parallel. Also disconnect one of the condensers, as one condenser is all that is needed.

The coil works very well with points, and as a bonus if you later decide to go with a Pamco ignition, you simply remove the 1.3 ohm resistor, as the Pamco will be happy with the 3.3 ohm primary.
 
Bjorn said:
The black wire coming out of the reg/rec runs to the single point ground but i mounted the RR on a steel part that is rubber mounted. Do I need to ground the RR body as well?
Click to expand...
To check, you could measure resistance between the case and each lead. It it's infinite with all of them, you know the case isn't part of any circuit.
 
On grounding, The Engine grounds through the engine mounts to the frame. On my bikes I remove one side of the rear engine mount. The one that has the triangular shaped pieces.
Where the mount plate touches the frame and engine I clean off the paint to bare steel. The same on the frame where the mount plate touches the frame.
Where the mount plate touches the engine, clean the engine to bare metal.
A thin coat of grease prevents corrosion. Reassemble.
You can do the other side as well as the upper mounts to. The upper mount has many separate parts so takes more effort. Just the rear mount is enough.
On my 75 with the 750 kit I also ran an extra ground cable from one starter mount bolt up the battery negative.
Any place you have a ground connection, you should have clean bare metal to clean bare metal.
Leo
 
This topic has been cold for a while. But now its hot again! Winter has ended and I have finished the bike:
IMG_20180325_145811066.jpg

besides the topmount being a ground between engine and frame (paint removed) I have also added to more ground wires. One between the topmount and the single point of ground. And i have added one between an engine headbolt and the frame. I increased all the ground wires in thickness.

So far so good. Last week i did a test run of 30km in town. Confidence is low in the bike so i stayed close to home haha. But everything worked great! No abnormalities observed. Battery voltage was good around 13 Vdc and 14,9 while loading. So I was super happy with the result.

However... today I went for a second testrun, 10 km later I got stranded again. Same sh*t as before, bike starts sputtering while riding. This sputtering increases in 20 seconds till the bike is dead.

Left it alone for a bit and this evening I tried to see if it would do anything. Guess what... started with one kick and revs as new. Battery voltage was 12,9 Vdc, with contact on : 12,6Vdc and while running 14,9Vdc (increasing the revs did not get it over 14,9).

What am i missing?? seems like something to do with temperature... I cant get my head around this...
 
Without going backwards through the thread to see what you've already done; beg borrow or steal a known good ignition coil. even better if you can get high tension leads with it.
 
Yes

Some fingers pointed to the previously installed coil (mikexs china). So replaced it for a Honda OEM coil. This years testrides were done with the Honda coil.
 
this last time when it staggered and died on you..... did you check to see if it was getting spark then ? ( kind'a hard to do when your out away from the shop I realise but that is when you really need to check) because although you think it may be electric it could be as JimD54 says...
simply starving for fuel..... and that is a whole different ball game than the electrics. !
I had to clean my carburetors 4 times...and I know carburetors very well !!!! yet these bastards gave me a good runaround to finally get clean !
you could be very easily running out of fuel, so you need to run it till it quits again and pull the plug and check for spark.... and KNOW one way or the other ! .....
Bob..........
 
inline spark tester
s-l1600.jpg


Pretty cheap at the local auto store. or carry an extra plug move a plug wire to that one to check spark.
 
gggGary said:
...or carry an extra plug move a plug wire to that one to check spark.
Click to expand...
That's how I've done it in the past. Don't burn your fingers as much...;)
Gary, can you run it down the road with that in-line tester installed? Get a "real time" indication?
 

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