TOPIC:

Thanks for your comment.

The PO had the lithuim battery in the bike for 4 years before I got it. Never had any issues.  Could anything else, over time, have burned out? Stator? Generator?

Im convinced the problem has to do with that dangling ignition coil.  I think it shorted. Ill check the fuses, send photos, and check the battery voltage as well.

So my trip was put off to Thursday

I was able to look at the bike.

Battery: is fine. 13.22 V at rest (lithium battery) and 10.99 when cranking

The fuses are NOT blown.

I have the coil off of the bike, how do I test it with my Multimeter?

Would it have mattered if the grounding bar (that runs through the coil) touched something?

I hope its not something internal thats damaged. The kick starter felt funny but its still as tough as the KZ750 is to kick.

Recap: riding for an extended period of time in 90 degree weather, bike lost power and came to a stop with all electrics still on and functioning.

You can set your meter to resistance to check the primary and secondary of the coil.

set meter to Ω
red probe on one of the positive terminal
black probe on the negative terminal
My kz440 (partzilla says the kz440 and kz750 use the same coil) service manual says the coil primary is supposed to be 1.8Ω-2.8Ω.

Move the red probe to one spark plug cable
Black probe the the other spark plug cable
Resistance should be at 10,400Ω-15,600Ω
You may need to unscrew the spark plug caps when you take a reading if you have resistor caps installed.
 

Thanks so much for this. I put the probes on each terminal, set the mutlimeter to 200ohms and got a reading of "1."
And it doesnt change if I reverse probes.

Then I put the probe on one spark plug wire, and one on the other and got the same reading. "1"

Does that mean the coil is no good?

Touch your red and black probes together.
What is your reading?

For the secondary (spark plug wire) test you need to set your meter to at least 20K.
You set your meter to 200 when the readings you are looking for are over 10,000.
So your meter setting needs to be 20,000 or above.

at 200 ohms, touching the probes together it reads 00.5

at 20,000 ohms the spark plug test reads 12.38

Terminal check with the probes on each terminal still reads "1" whether at 200ohms or 20,000 ohms.

It looks like your coil's primary is open(wire is broken internally)
You may be able to wiggle the terminals while metering to see if the reading drops to the specified range.
The thin wire inside the primary may have broken from the terminal when the coil fell..hard to know what happened.

 

You are so helpful! I wish I could buy you a beer, baseball game ticket, whatever. Thanks so much. It was a hot day and I think the coil dropped down and touched the cylinder cover. Maybe it got too hot?

Well, at least I know the coil is the issue. I would have though it blew a fuse first.

You're welcome:)
No gift needed-just pay it forward

A wire breaking doesn't blow a fuse.
It's hard to know what cause the break.
It could be a bunch of different things at once.

Others will chime in now if you want to know what coil to get.

Keep us in the loop once you get the replacement coil.

 

I just bought an emgo. should be here on Friday

in re paying it forward, I was at the market today and an older man in front of me had food. It came to $37 and he didnt have enough to get a bunch of oranges he wanted. I told the cashier to put it on my bill. The older man, who was clearly on a fixed budget said "you didnt have to do that." I said "its nice to be nice." I paid it forward already!

You totally paid it forward!

Let us know when you get the coil installed

Will do!