No Ohm readings. What am I doing wrong?

I am trying to get the Ohm readings from my coil primary and secondary wires. I have the Multi-meter set to 20K on the plug wires and I am not getting anything. Positive inside the plug cap and Negative to the ground. Someone want to enlighten me on what the heck is going on. I also can't get any reading on the small (primary) wires.

Put negative inside the other plug cap.

Good Fortune!

Would re-set ohmmeter to its lowest range when measuring resistance in the primary wiring.

Good Fortune!

For ohm reading on the primary side of the ignition coil, drop the setting on the meter to 200 ohms, as most ignition coils will read between 1.8 and 3 ohms(some may read as high as 4 ohms).

Don't know the model meter you have.
Verify your leads are plugged into the correct jacks on the meter if applicable.
Set the meter to autoranging, if that's not applicable, set it to 20k ohms.
Touch the leads together, don't let your fingers touch the exposed ends of the leads.
You should get zero or 0.0 ohms.
If you get infinite ohms or "limit" or something like that then you have an open in your leads or the meter has an open inside. Get new leads or a new meter.

Got ya. I'm a dummy, I had one wire in a plug cap and the other on a ground to the frame. Ooops.

Ok, I went and tried it again. Is the ohm reading supposed to stay on the screen? The only time I get a reading is when I switch it from lets say 200ohm to 2000ohm reading and a different number will pop up every time it is switched back and fourth. Like 3.59 then 7.23 then 5.15 just random every time.

How fresh is the battery? Some meters have a "Hold" button that will retain the reading.

This will help:


(Using a multimeter)

When I touch the two leads together it goes to 0 and stays until I let it go. I put the wires on both sets of plug wires coming out of the one coil and I get nothing. Just a blank screen. I tried both coil and get the same thing. That is with the meter set to 200K ohms.

It's been my experience that when a digital meter set to measure resistance acts like you describe it means there is some voltage present on the wire you are measuring. Or you have a reactive component (like a capacitor) in the circuit that is causing the odd reading because of the voltage the meter is putting into the circuit. Disconnect the coil wires from the posts to remove the condenser or the electronic ignition from the circuit. Put your leads on each of the posts and measure the resistance. It should be very low. Remove the spark plug wire from the coil and measure the resistance between each of the posts to the center post. Both of those readings should be very high. I think those numbers are in the manual. If you don't get the right numbers, replace the coil.
Here's a page with some info:
Dan's motorcycle page.

That's the tricky part I have original coils and you can't disconnect the plug wires. In fact I had to get splicers to splice in my new plug wires to the old coil. I'm thinking I might have wasted money on splicers if my coils are shot. The bike will run just not right.

Well, as long as you can get to the end with your lead. The cap may have a resistor in it that will affect your reading. As long as you take that into account, you're okay.

Ok guys this is annoying. :pinch: I even tried replacing the battery in the multimeter and no change. I am not getting any ohm reading from the coil wires of either coil. What is going on here? :blink: The ohm meter works fine on other wires.