March 23, 201412 yr Author Well, I drained and changed the fuel to fresh-from-the-pump 91 octane (I'm at 5000'), mixed 80:1 with Maxima. Nope. I changed the plug, again. Nope. I gapped the plug to .3mm, which I'd read somewhere would help. Nope. I removed and tested the coil, which seemed to be within the range: .7 ohms primary, 8.8 kohms secondary. I haven't found a GG spec, but this seems normal. Then I thought to myself: the KTM 200 runs like a banshee and is roughly the same size motor, so perhaps it can be an organ donor. It's down for a clutch replacement anyway, so it's half-disassembled and sitting right beside the GG. I swapped in the coil from the KTM and... IT'S ALIVE! First kick, super smooth. I tried it several times to be sure. So, I guess coils DO fail. Anyone have a coil I can buy? THANKS everyone. What a relief!
March 23, 201412 yr Great to hear that you found the problem. Yes, coils do fail but not often on motorcycles. Coils are exactly that: coils of wire around a core. I find it ironic that we jump to the conclusion that a stator (a coil of wire around a core) has failed, yet don't think about an ignition coil failing. Get out on that bike and do a wheelie for us all in celebration!
March 24, 201412 yr There you go man, good job! You can probably get one of them pitbike coils off fleabay cheap! They NEVER FAIL!
March 28, 201412 yr Author Further update: I received the good used coil from lineaway (thanks!), and installed it. The bike started first kick as expected, and ran fine....for about 30 minutes. ARRGGH! Suspecting fuel, I pulled the carb & cleaned the passages, but it would only crank intermittently and would only run at high revs... The real clue came when I reached down and touched the tank and was rewarded with a nasty shock. Aha! I turns out that the spark plug boot was so tightly smashed against the back side of the cooling fan that it had worn through and was allowing the spark to jump to ground there, instead of in the plug! When the boot is off of the plug you can't see the tiny hole because it's no longer stretched. I had noticed it before, but thought it didn't matter--my bad! The radiator looks good and appears to be mounted correctly, but there is just not enough space behind the fan for the boot to go on the plug without pressing hard on the fan. I put in a jumper (spare car coil extension wire) which has a much lower-profile plug connector, and everything seems to be working beautifully. It's a kluge, but I can't see how else to get it to work. I can't say at this point whether the original coil was killed by the shorting wire, or whether it's actually just fine and I could have just replaced the plug. I'm not going to take it apart again to find out right now--too much riding to do!
March 30, 201412 yr It does not seem right that the fan housing would be that close to the plug boot. The smaller boot should solve the problem. I wonder of someone replaced the boot at some previous time with the bigger one? On my old JT25, I had a similar problem with the water hose rubbing on the exhaust pipe. I put a wide zip tie around the hose so the zip tie would take the rubbing action rather than the rubber hose. The original coil is probably still OK other than the boot hole. Coils rarely fail and if you think about it, the spark was going to the radiator because it was an easier path then jumping the plug gap. Get out and ride!
March 17, 20188 yr Can anyone guide me as to what size woodruff key I would need for a 2001 gasgas txt 280 not the pro
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.