Gosh, that would be the worst day ever; going back to the bike and not finding a bike. Lucky for me, I was able to get it pushed to a nearby friend's home. Not the best neighborhood, but I'm not super concerned about it. Still going to borrow a trailer and get it home though.
Pickup coil does checkout with correct ohms.
In other news, EXCITING developments!
I am now getting spark through normal cranking operation.
Previously, when this all first started happening, my first attempt at fixing it was to replace the pickup coil. I know the manual say not to do this and to replace it with the stator and everything. I think the only reason they say this is because they don't want people splicing wires inside the case or breaking that special rubber grommet forcing new wires through and creating an oil leak.
Which is really wise advice: high temperatures would most likely melt standard heatshrink wrap, and pity to the person who decides to wrap his solder joints with electrical tape. All that turbulent oil flipping around everywhere would probably cause all sorts of problems. Needless to say, I am using a special self sealing splice tape that fuses together and is good up to 500 degrees. I trust I will be fine patching in a new pickup coil. Though, come to think of it, oh crap, I should double check the melting point of my solder
Actually, this will probably end badly. I must revise my connection. Anyway, I will attend to that later.
Anyway...
Unfortunately for me, the new pickup coil had no wiring diagram and apparently, I matched the wrong wires and reversed the polarity. I have since reversed them and can fire off sparks no problem while cranking.
But wait, does this mean problem solved? In all actuality, I have no idea what went wrong, because my old pickup coil still tests out correctly. My old ignition control box seems to function correctly too. And when I throw my old spark plug coil back on, I think that is going to fire just as well just the same (again, all these things TESTED fine to begin with). Will follow up on that soon.
So it looks like in this project, I have introduced a lot of variables; which doesn't really go well with good science. The only one to remain the same will be the new pickup coil. Still seems like an odd change when the other registers fine.
BUT, through all this experimenting,
I believe I have found an easy, new viable way of testing the ignition control box for correct operation. I will do a write up on this later. I owe all the experimenting with an off board pickup coil and magnets to this discovery. And as it turns out, that half volt I'm getting seems to be fine for the ignition control box to fire off a signal. Really, since the ignition control box is transistor controlled, a high voltage isn't really needed on the trigger end. Transistors are current controlled. And though I seem to be getting less than a milliamp of current on startup, it may be more than enough to create the needed gain and amplification to carry down the rest of the line into a voltage that actually matters. Cool stuff.
In conclusion, if all that WAS wrong turns out to be the old pickup coil, maybe the magnet that is in the pickup is wearing low on power, and the air space between the pickup and the rotor was finally too much to make it work properly. I have no idea for certain, but any idea sounds better than no idea.
Testing method with pictures and junk pending! (and me fixing my poor pickup swap
)
Science!
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