coil mod success!

Pretty much every material increases in resistance as it heats up as long as it doesn't melt or change in some other way. But in coils, the culprit is usually that the wires inside expand from heat and move slightly. Cracks in the insulation will become bigger and may short out, or if the copper is cracked, the wire may "open".

Biquetoast wrote:

...Also, I didn't want to mention this until I received the parts....

I just wanted to follow up and say that the parts arrived in two days, with nice packaging, and some marketing stuff and a free little screwdriver... Honestly I don't know how they can afford to do it so cheaply...

By the way, GargantuChet also mentioned this place a year ago, in *my* old thread about having done the coil mod ... I'm sad I never noticed it in my own thread, it would have saved me... oh about $100 by now...

Post edited by: Biquetoast, at: 2006/10/10 17:47

just got mine done today on the kz650......didn't even have to mess with the timing...I was surprised that I had the timing set dead nuts on to begin with...I mounted the relay on the right side on a bolt at the bottom of the battery box.....makes a world of difference

I'm dumb when it comes to electrical stuff..
After doing WG's mod, when you shut the bike off does the battery still send direct current to the coils? Will it kill the battery?
:blush:

..it shouldn't, if the ignition is off - it'd break the connection.

Right?

I'm pretty oblivious to the electrical system on my bike too.

Oh - and do you need anything else, other than those 4 items from Parts Express to do the mod? I understand what a 'pigtail' is now.. :whistle: :blush:

Post edited by: pyxen, at: 2006/10/11 09:17

Bwhahaha... Maybe I can shed some light on the issue of the coils being powered when the key is shut off!

First, if you take a peek at the wiring diagram on my web site: www.wgcarbs.com/59021.html - You will note that there is a wire going directly from your battery to your coils but there is a relay in the middle. The relay can be thought of as a gate. The gate closes when the key is turned on and opens when turned off. In other words, it is triggered (see the trigger wire?) to close when you turn the key on and opens when the ignition is shut off. The path for this trigger is through your kill switch so if the kill switch is placed in the OFF position, the trigger stops triggering and the relay opens. All this means that the ONLY reason for the relay is to control power to the coils so that they are only powered when the key is on and the kill switch is in the RUN position. It would probably be easier to just run a wire directly from your battery to the coils but if the coils remain powered when the bike isn't running and they would soon burn up. The coils are air cooled! You could also use a switch rather than a relay but if you forgot to shut the switch off when you parked the bike... BURNED COILS so a relay was chosen to automate turning power on and off when it makes sense to do so.

Since this is my secound KZ1000 in over 10 years and never did any thing like this to it on my first one.
When you do the coil mod is it an ad on or am I bypassing something? Other than the Dyna upgrade .

wagonmaster69 wrote:

...it an ad on or am I bypassing something?...

You are bypassing the old, brittle, potentially failing wiring in the harness.

Of course, you still use the harness power line as a trigger, but it can handle that OK.

OK but can you tell me exactly what old wire I am replacing.

You are replacing the smaller gauge power wire for the coils with a slightly larger gauge wire, in a more direct route from the battery to the coils.

The original wire takes a long route with many connections before it ends at the coils. That makes for lots of places to slowly drop voltage. The mod does away with that long route, and essentially gives you a straight shot from the batery to the coils.

Look further into this website, go to the "KZ Information" tab at top, then click on the "Filebase" tab and find the coil repower mod.

Well I will just do that and thanks your humble KZer.