Cold ignition problem

As usual, click any image to zoom in.

Mark tried to start his bike this morning and it was having none of it.

When we originally bought it, it was hot starting that was the problem. Now we've changed the ignition coil and done the earths that seems to be fixed.





After checking battery levels (on and off load) and connections, we ended up replacing the ignition cable from the centre of the ignition coil to the spark plug cap. This seemed to help a little but not enough so we removed the ignition cap completely and looped the copper strand from the ignition cable directly under the top of the spark plug et voila.




Pazon recommend a 4.5k to 5.5k resistor in the ignition cap - or none at all. Mark's bike came with a 10k ignition cap which apart from being outside the manufacturer's tolerance could well have been breaking down.

Left it a few hours to go stone cold and Mark was able to ride 8 miles to my place, have a brew and ride it back without any issues at all. It now starts within three kicks every time so let's see what tomorrow brings!

Ignition sorted - hopefully!

As usual, click any image to zoom in.



Mark has had trouble again this week with starting his bike - in as much as it would not start at all.

If you were lucky enough to kickstart the bike within the first two kicks then great, otherwise the spark plug was wet and we had to dry it out on the kitchen hob before trying again.

There were several times when the exhaust would spit or even shoot a 3 foot long flame. Admittedly, that's a bit like me after a vindaloo but I am bobbing on a bit after all and my gaskets aren't what they were. Still, the point is his bike wouldn't start.

The bike has a Pazon 12V electronic ignition system - modified for single cylinder - and we noticed that the ignition coil was getting quite warm if not hot fairly quickly after a cosmic ray struck and we were able to start the bike. A miracle in itself after Luigi's trick of pulling the clutch in while I was kickstarting it the other night.

This morning we fitted a new ignition coil from Brian at BSA Lightning Spares and tidied up some of the wiring on the electronic ignition system so that leads were "cut to length". We also found a few poor earth connections and resoldered those. The frame has been repainted at some point and looks brilliant, but from an electronics point of view there was a non-existent earth for the coil and rectifier so we scraped away the paint under the bolts in those areas in the shot and also hard-wired an earth (orange cable) from the chassis to the positive terminal on the battery.

As per a previous post, the kitchen sink filter/air filter is now in situ and working well.