79' KZ1000E1/ST Replacement Coils

Hey everyone, I'm trying to replace the stock coils on my bike, but after reading some posts on here I'm a little leary of ordering them just yet. My manual says that the primary side on my stock coils should test about 1.5 ohms since it is a transistorized model. I am thinking of ordering the 1.5 ohm dyna coils from z1, but I've read that too low of a coil resistance can lead to problems with the igniter whereas a slightly higher resistance does not have much effect. So my question is should I go with the 1.5 ohm coils or should I step up and use the 2.2 ohm coils just to be safe? Also, are the copper core wires ok to use or should I be using the suppresion wires? Thanks in advance for your info.

Personal preference, go with 1.5 coils, solid core wires, resistance caps. Package will be closest to stock pick-up/ecm requirements. luck G

If I'm not mistaken, the 1.5-ohm coils were meant to be used with a ballast resistor on the early transistorized models. Later (like a year later), they eliminated the resistor and went to 2.4-ohm coils. (They may have been 2.2-ohm coils, but I've never come across any less than about 2.4 ohms.)

You can use the 1.5-ohm coils if you want to maintain the ballast resistor, but the resistor wastes power. It would be more efficient to use the 2.2-ohm coils without a ballast resistor.

I would not recommend using 1.5-ohm coils without the ballast. It may burn out the ignitor.

Thanks for the feedback guys. After looking at the z1 website, I have decided to go with the 3 ohm coils and remove the ballast resistor. The z1 website states "For some Kawasaki bikes with a resistor in the circuit (i.e. KZ1000's in the late 70's and early 80's), the 3 ohm coil is the best choice - just remove the ballast resistor from the circuit." This made sense when I thought about it: 1.7 ohms for the resistor plus 1.5 ohms in the coil equals 3.2 ohms total. The resistances should add together since the components are wired in series. Anyway, I've ordered the 3 ohm coils, so we'll see what happens. Thanks again for the help.

I also use 3-ohm coils with the stock electronic ignition.

That's a good decision as the ballasts are almost always suspect after this many years. I'm running that on my E1 for about 2k miles with no problems.

How do you rewire the ballast after you remove it? Do I just crimp all the wires together?

Bullitt03737 wrote:

How do you rewire the ballast after you remove it? Do I just crimp all the wires together?

That should be correct, you want to bypass the ballast resistor if you go to a higher resistance coil.