still stumped.

[xsross442]

my bike is back to old was no headlight and no spark. this is just
about wher i started. after making the corrections in my new book (corrections from this site thank you gentlemen) i followed the clymer books trouble shooting specs. and it led me to the ignition box. now to try and find one.

[DiverRay]

Check with Randy, as he's the "iggy box" Guru. I seem to remember that MOST of the problems were from the solder joints going bad. I would pull the cover, and reheat all the solder joints till the solder reflows.
Randy has a web site that will explain the why and how of the boxes.
Ray

[xsross442]

still stumped.

hello gentalmen well this is whats going on. i have now (on my 78 xs1100) replaced the ignition box , fuse block(thank you t.c.) ohmed the coils pick up and ignition. disconected the emergency shut off cleaned out the key switch and checked for shorts and bad contact in all wires. high beam switch to tail light bulbs and it still only fires when it feels like it and no i wont only ride it when it wants. so whats next im running out of time. as baby will be here next week then all my spare time will be gone. by the way how hot should the alt. cover be? it felt too hot for my taste


thank you

[Ken Talbot]

What exactly do you mean by "ohmed the coils pick up and ignition"? I.e., did you unplug the connector where the wires from the pick-up coils connect to the ignition coils, have somebody hold a meter across the individual pairs in turn, then yank and pull vigorously on the wires to ensure you did not lose conductivity? Does this mean you also removed the sparkplug caps, trimmed 1/4" off of each wire, and screwed the caps back on?

[xsross442]

I followed the Clymers manual for testing resistance to the letter. I didnt trim wires cause I cant fathom all four failing at the same time and then working all at the same time.

[mro]

No fire, er...........sometimes

voltage drop and tci "no fire"
double check tci plugs too (loose wire to a pin?)

bad engine/frame ground

short or open in harness <<<< that be bad and hard to find, but not likely (happen to have this prob w/a honda shadow only firing on one cylinder (most of the time).

digital mm works best for checking voltage. can hook to battery and watch when cranking engine. I believe lower than 10.5V and it's a no go for tci.....



mro

[xsross442]

well i spent another 4 hours on the damn thing and no luck at all this things got me fuming. but now when i checked the resistance on the primary side of the ign. coils they show a direct short from red/white to orange and same to grey so are they bad now?

[Ken Talbot]

Originally posted by xsross442
I followed the Clymers manual for testing resistance to the letter.

Clymers is fine as far as it goes for static checking the pick-up coils and the ignition coils. However you still need to check the pick-up coil wires in action. If you cannot get it running at all, you ned to check them like I said above, with an extra pair of hands to hold the leads and meter while you work the wires.

[randy]

xsross442;

Sorry for not joining this thread earlier,

Don't assume you've got a good TCI just because you swapped it. They are all over 25 yrs old and notorious for corrosion on the solder joints.

Visit my web page (link below) where you'll find help with re-soldering the TCI pins.

Have you tried testing ( or swapping) your ballast resistor?

As for the short on the coils, watch your meter settings, if you're set on high ohms, like 1K or 10k, they will appear to be a dead short. Use the RX1 scale for the coil primaries.

As others have written, go through and clean your ground connections. There is one near the battery and one on the engine just above the shifter. Take them apart and give them a good cleaning and greasing



home.ptd.net\~theragos\xs11\index.htm

[xsross442]

i testsed the tci box as shown on randys site with a digital meter and on both sides the voltage just droped to 8.5 and stayed there what does that mean? thanks for the info now i feel like i can get somewhere once i know what this means.

[randy]

xsross442,

First off, the best meter for those tests is an analog one. The needle swing will be much easier to read than the lcd readout. The voltage change may be too quick for the digital to react.

Try the test with an analog meter, if the result is the same, could mean two things:


Either there is no signal from the pickups, but not likely that both are funked up.

Or, there are bad solder joints inside the TCI. (Most likely)

Have you tried the solder fix? you can do it without removing the TCI, just pull the cover off of it. Re-solder the two rows of pins and let us know the results.

[xsross442]

i tried soldering the pins on my old unit with no change. both units i have show the exact same results unfortunatly i do not have a analog meter on the bottom of my meter it has a lcd strength bar and that did fluctuate during testing.

[randy]

xsross442;

You wrote earlier that you disconnected the emergency shut off.

Did you mean the one on the handle bar? If so, you would have to tie the wires together (red/white + red/white) to get juice to the TCI. That switch disconnects the TCI from the power circuit when it's in the OFF position.

OR, did you mean the one under the tank? The TIPOVER switch? That switch is definitely suspect. With that one, you can pull it's plug to take it out of the circuit. That switch, when it closes, sends a SHORT to the TCI and shuts it down.

[xsross442]

tonight i am going to remove the whole wiring harness and lay it out and inspect the thing wire by wire as i have tested every componant i can and all seems to be correcti dont know what else to do.

[xsross442]

i finally got to the bottom of the problem the inside of the ignition coils must be broken down i got it to run today so i shut it off quickly and tested the coils and they showed 1.6 ohms. i then plugged them in again and ran the bike till it was warmed up approx. 5 min. shut it off and tryed to restart . of course it did not so i tested the coils again and BAM dead short. so does anyone have any coils for sale? i will post on the parts wanted. again thank you to all for the help. maybe now i can start sending happy posts