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5/10/2021
Anonymous (not verified)
Hey all, I have acquired a 1975 XL350 K1 that appears to be in decent shape, but I can't get a spark for the life of me. I have tried to follow a few other threads here and on other websites, but now I seem to be stuck and need help from someone who has a lot of experience with these machines.
To start I disconnected the engine killswitch and the ignition is straight up missing, so I considered that disconnected as well.
I had a test light in at the alternator's black and white wire and that connection is good when I kick the bike over. I then moved the test light to the joint connection of the alternator and the points. The test light also lights up there when I kick over the bike.
So at that point I figured I could get the bike going. I connected the ignition coil to the joint connection of the alternator and the points as I did above and tested there with the test light. Still good. So I moved my test light to the small metal contact between the condensor and the ingition coil. Still had light there. However, when I went to test the secondary coil (spark plug end) in the spark plug cap, my test light showed absolutely nothing after many kicks. I replaced my test light with the spark plug and placed the spark plug on the cylinder head as described in the manual. No spark when I kicked the bike over.
So I figured that the coil must be bad or something of that nature. I tested the resistance of the coil and I had ~16,000 Ohms between the secondary coil and the ground and ~2-3 Ohms between the condensor lead and the ground. This is very confusing because everything I have read tells me that the ignition coil is good based off of those numbers! I went and bought another coil off of ebay figuring that I just got unlucky with a bad coil. The "new" coil was not different at all - still no spark out of the ignition coil even though the circuit was good at the end of the condensor!
Does anyone have thoughts as to what I could try next? I haven't reset the points gap or timing as I assumed that was just for actual engine performance and timing once you had a spark. Was I wrong in assuming that?
To start I disconnected the engine killswitch and the ignition is straight up missing, so I considered that disconnected as well.
I had a test light in at the alternator's black and white wire and that connection is good when I kick the bike over. I then moved the test light to the joint connection of the alternator and the points. The test light also lights up there when I kick over the bike.
So at that point I figured I could get the bike going. I connected the ignition coil to the joint connection of the alternator and the points as I did above and tested there with the test light. Still good. So I moved my test light to the small metal contact between the condensor and the ingition coil. Still had light there. However, when I went to test the secondary coil (spark plug end) in the spark plug cap, my test light showed absolutely nothing after many kicks. I replaced my test light with the spark plug and placed the spark plug on the cylinder head as described in the manual. No spark when I kicked the bike over.
So I figured that the coil must be bad or something of that nature. I tested the resistance of the coil and I had ~16,000 Ohms between the secondary coil and the ground and ~2-3 Ohms between the condensor lead and the ground. This is very confusing because everything I have read tells me that the ignition coil is good based off of those numbers! I went and bought another coil off of ebay figuring that I just got unlucky with a bad coil. The "new" coil was not different at all - still no spark out of the ignition coil even though the circuit was good at the end of the condensor!
Does anyone have thoughts as to what I could try next? I haven't reset the points gap or timing as I assumed that was just for actual engine performance and timing once you had a spark. Was I wrong in assuming that?
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