bad coils???

No, coil cases do not have to be grounded. The ground for the secondary winding is the block, on the negative side of the spark plug. The voltage jumps this gap to ground. But also it won't hurt to ground them, as the windings are insulated from the case anyway. That's why the primary terminals are encased in a plastic (or whatever) cap.

The inside wiring of a coil looks very roughly like this....

It is insulated from the case and fill with oil as a cooolant.

The core of the coils do not have to be grounded electrically. There is slight chance they will behave differently when they are bolted to the frame through the core as opposed to being attached by external clamps. But that would only be due to magnetic reasons (altering the inductance slightly and altering the point of magnetic saturation in the core) and probably don't matter at all, really.

Out of the OEM Manual....

Sparkplug caps can also breakdown creating a very weak spark. www.z1enterprises.com sells new ones.

Ok, thanks for all the useful input. The plugs are wet with fuel not oil. I went back and verified the fuel level with a clear tube. Timing is right on. New NGK B7ES plugs. I ordered new Dyna coils and wires should be hear Wednesday. That should answer any coils problems I'm having. I didn't think you needed to ground the coils but thought I would ask just the same. I will just keep plugging along until I figure it out with all of your helpful suggestions of course.

What is the input voltage to the coils? It should be battery voltage with a fully charged battery in good shape.

Measure at the RED wire connection on the coils with the RED probe of the multimeter and the BLACK probe on the frame at a good grounding point or at the Negative(-) battery terminal.

I know it's not very scientific, but if I want to check for a good spark in the cylinder, I pull off a plug wire while the bike is idling. If it stumbles, then it was getting spark. If you pull a plug wire and the idle doesn't change, then that cylinder was probably just along for the ride.

Funny thing about pulling the plug boots off @ idle it doesn't seem to change things much doesn't matter which plug I pull. so once again I'm in the dark. P.S. did the WG coil mod so coils have full battery voltage.

spudbudy wrote:

Funny thing about pulling the plug boots off @ idle it doesn't seem to change things much doesn't matter which plug I pull. so once again I'm in the dark. P.S. did the WG coil mod so coils have full battery voltage.

Reported problems could result from too low voltage reaching coils for whatever reason, regardless of coil mod.

Should use a voltmeter to measure the actual voltage at each coil primary terminal.
Do this measurement 3 ways: with engine off, again at idle, and again at 3000 rpm.
Measure voltage across battery terminals the same 3 ways.
Compare battery voltage with coil voltage in each scenerio.

Coil mod doesn't assure sufficient voltage is reaching the coil.

Good Fortune!