Barn Find 1978 KZ200 is fighting with me!

Several months back I bought a Little KZ200 from a fellow at work. After months of searching for a Front cable actuated caliper I Finally got it ready for the road.

It has always ran, but I had to do the typical Carb dip and fluids. The Bike only has 13k on it.

Long story short......... I fired up the bike to put some miles on it and it slowly lost more and more power until it died and left me stranded after about 5 minutes.

I found I have no fire and I Noticed the coil has oozed a thick white paste out of both ends. I Assume the coil is fried?

The Bike has points. Could this be converted to a car type points coil you think? Anything else I need to check that would cause it not to have fire?

I am pretty new to the Old bike scene and would greatly appreciate your help.

Anytime an ignition coil developes cracks or the innards start to ooze out, it's time for a new coil.

I'd guess a 3 ohm coil would work and while you're at it replace the sparkplug caps and possibly the sparkplug wire too.

I'd ask at www.z1enterprises.com and see if they can help you in your parts search.

Yikes! The Price for these coils are almost as much as I paid for the bike.

Would a Points style automotive coil work for this as a replacment?


Would a Coil go bad just like that? Parts are UBer hard to find for this little bike.

deezil wrote:

Would a Points style automotive coil work for this as a replacment?

No. Most automotive coils have a very low resistance because car distributors provide such a short dwell time. Your coil. most likely was about 4 ohms. Classic car coils are in the 1 ohm range. Modern car coils are also usually too low on resistance.

Model (6):
KZ200-A1 (1978)
KZ200-A1A (1978)
KZ200-A2 (1979)
KZ305-A1 (CSR) (1981)
KZ305-A2 (CSR) (1982)
KZ305-B1 (CSR Belt) (1982)

The bike above shared the same coil as you. Check ebay for a used coil to get you started. Also Kawasaki.com list this coil as still "Active" so you could buy a new one.

Well today i had the kz200 out in my driveway checking the left side cover oil leak and a old fellow up the street came by to shoot the breeze.

He wanted to know if it ran and I said It didnt because of the fried coil. He stated that years ago he out cheapie car coils on his Kaw Triple 2 stroke and ran it like that for years before selling it.

I asked him if he remembered what car application he had gotten the coils from and he said he actually still had a extra and if I wanted to try it out..

What the hell I said I'll try it. The Coil was off of a 74 Amc Gremlin V8 with points he said. A few minutes later he came down with the coil and a old spark plug wire. My old coil had a single black wire with connector for the condenser and the points wire. It also had a wire I assume going to the ignition.

He just tied the condenser and points wire to the neg side of the coil and then ran the ignition wire to the hot side. After the spark plug wire was on he hit the button and the little kz200 roared to life!!

I ran the bike for about 15 minutes and it ran fine. I have no clue what the ohm rating on his coil is? Do you guys think any harm will come to bike if I just used it instead of finding a high dollar original one?

Also I found this Universal coil but it is 4.8 ohms. Think this would be a better option?

www.oldbikebarn.com/Universal-12-Volt-Ig...bh0Te34Pa38Ta38Och50

My understanding is that it's o.k. to run a higher resistance coil but the spark energy might be less.

Never run lower ohm coil than came with the bike as the coil will overheat.

Yes, it will run with a car coil, but it will use far more current and will shorten the life of the points. The reason you can do it on an old Kaw 2-stroke triple is that those bikes use a CDI ignition. CDI uses a different principle in operation.

The other option you have, if you really want to use the car coil, is to put a resistor in line with the coil. You'll need a three-ohm, 75 watt resistor.

In line meaning the neg wire going to the points and condenser?

Also......... Where would I find this resistor?
The Radio Shack fellow looked at my like I was nut's when I asked for that size.

deezil wrote:

In line meaning the neg wire going to the points and condenser?

The resistor(s) would go on the positive side of the coil. Instead of 12v wire going directly to the coil's positive terminal, the 12v wire would go to the resistor(s), then the other end of the resistor(s) would have a wire going to the coil's positive terminal.

Radio Shack used to have them, probably before the clerk was born. You can make a big resistor out of small resistors. You're shooting for somewhere in the 3 to 4 ohm range and 60 to 100 watts. The resistors will get HOTTT!! so they must not be wrapped in tape and should be exposed to air preferably away from the engine, like closer to the battery. Make sure they won't burn anything. When the bike is running, they will give off the heat equivalent to about a 40 watt light bulb.

You can use three 1-ohm, 25 watt resistors in series to equal one 3-ohm, 75 watt resistor.

Or you can use three 10-ohm, 25 watt resistors in parallel (that makes 3.3 ohms).

There are many other combos you can use to make 3 to 4 ohms and 60 to 100 watts.