Wired George Mod - No spark

Hey all,

Just finished the Wired George mod to my '77 KZ650.. and now it won't start. I can't even see any spark from my plugs! I have points, by the way. Kill switch was in the ON position.

I do get voltage to my coils, so my thought was maybe a bad relay-- I've ordered a new one already. Tried moving power from the starter relay straight to the battery, same with the ground. No luck. The only difference I made was that I merely connected my Y-split to the existing yellow wires instead of directly onto each coil-- shouldn't matter IMO, I just don't have "posts" on my coils, I have those slide on connectors.

From the relay pigtail #87, solder / shrink wrap a length of 18 ga. wire sufficiently long to reach the rear of the coils. At this point, solder / shrink wrap two wires that will each go to the front of one of the coils forming a “Y”. Install a blue crimp-on “eye” type connector onto each leg of the “Y” and install these connectors onto one of the two small lugs on each of the coils.

Any suggestions?? Any specific places I can stick a multimeter to read where I lose the connection?

Was hoping it would roar back to life, but instead I made it worse! :laugh:

It's not a complicated mod, though it might seem like it to us who aren't electricians. First thing I would do is run the wires back as they were originally and make sure the bike still runs as it should.

Here's a link to George's wiring diagram if you don't already have it: www.wgcarbs.com/index.php/using-joomla/e...-categories/89-coils

You say your getting voltage to the coils.
How much?
If close to 12 or over, the relay is working.

It seems you must have something wired wrong, if the points etc. have not been touched, you were purely rewiring the 12v supply to the coils, then it should run if 12v are going to the coils, if you've run a wire directly from your battery to the coil supply and it's not going, the fault has to be how it's wired, because if the points are working there would have to be a spark.

Coil primary winding should reach ground through closed points.

Opening of points disconnects the ground, which causes the coil to fire.

When the coil fires, high voltage is supposed to travel through the secondary loop.
A break in the secondary loop, for whatever reason, prevents firing.
The break could be anywhere, such as coil>wire, wire>cap, cap>plug, defective wire, defective cap, defective plug, etc.



Good Fortune!

rstnick wrote: You say your getting voltage to the coils.
How much?
If close to 12 or over, the relay is working.

When I checked it was at ~11.5V to the coils. This was after several minutes of hitting the starter button so I'm sure the battery drained a bit?

Patton wrote: Coil primary winding should reach ground through closed points.

Opening of points disconnects the ground, which causes the coil to fire.

When the coil fires, high voltage is supposed to travel through the secondary loop.
A break in the secondary loop, for whatever reason, prevents firing.
The break could be anywhere, such as coil>wire, wire>cap, cap>plug, defective wire, defective cap, defective plug, etc.

Good Fortune!

Thanks for the help! I can recheck my points gap to make sure, but it was firing before the mod.

As of this past year, these are new coils, new caps, new wire, and brand new plugs. I can reseat everything just to double check though.

I know it's not necessarily related to this issue, but part of me thinks my battery might need replacing.. I will give it a full charge and see what voltage it's at.

Remove the mod; it is not needed. Think about it - Kawasaki sold about a million KZ bikes without the mod and every single one ran fine when it was new - without the mod. So if your bike was running poorly or wasn't getting proper voltage to the coils the reason was obviously something other than the fact that the bike did not have the mod done to it. Remove the mod. Ed

650ed wrote: Remove the mod; it is not needed. Think about it - Kawasaki sold about a million KZ bikes without the mod and every single one ran fine when it was new - without the mod. So if your bike was running poorly or wasn't getting proper voltage to the coils the reason was obviously something other than the fact that the bike did not have the mod done to it. Remove the mod. Ed

I appreciate the input Ed, but I'd like to give it chance to see if I yield any practical results. Obviously need to sort out a few things, and this is clearly only a bandaid solution, but this still seems like a worthwhile effort from the results other people have seen. I will be keeping the mod-- for now!

A coil is a two terminal instrument. If you have +12 on the hot side, check to see if you have the "point ground" line on the other terminal. Should ground with points closed and go open circuit when the points open.

Hey all,

Spent some time over the weekend working out the kinks, and I'm happy to say my coil mod was successful!!

It really is insane how much of a difference it made-- so much more power!!! Still have to fine tune the jetting and timing, but so far I'm really happy with the results.

Here's what I did:

1) Readjusted points with an old analog ohmmeter (still need to do dynamic timing test)
2) Checked and rechecked my wiring
3) Kickstarted the bike 27 times until it finally came to life haha

BUT, one issue remains it seems:
-- sometimes if I switch to handle switches from RUN from OFF and back to RUN again, the relay doesn't turn (I don't hear it click). I think I may be having some grounding issues inside the controls? Not sure what else would be causing this problem..

krayneeum wrote: It really is insane how much of a difference it made-- so much more power!!! ..

Then I would suspect the coil is bad.