Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums General Tech Help needed from the brains trust!

I have a electrical problem that has me beat! I went to go for a blast this morning and got a 10second start out of my America running on 1 cylinder (left) before it stopped. Kept cranking it over choke in, choke out, until I flattened the battery. So I hooked up the jumper leads off my car. So here is the mystery. When I pulled the plugs, on both sides, there is no spark with the plug grounded on the exhaust header. As I pulled the plug away from the header a huge, bright blue spark jumps a 1/2 inch from the plug threads to the braided oil line. This is happening on both cylinders. I checked this out with a brand new plug and the same thing happened, so that kinda rules out a plug problem. While the spark is jumping from the threads there is a spark at the electrode. When the plug is grounded there is an intermittent weak orange spark between the insulator and the plug body. This has got me buggered????? Any suggestions?????

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When the plug is grounded there is an intermittent weak orange spark between the insulator and the plug body

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This would make me think bad plug wires.
The rest is kinda mystifying though.
Could be the wires are shorting, and when you move them, it stops the short.

So replace the plug wires, they're cheap enough, and see what happens.

Thanks for your input Bill. I have nology hot wires and coils that were only installed last October. They probably have about 8000 k's on them so I'm sort of discounting that as the problem for now. The thing that I forgot to put in my previous post is that I started the bike yesterday afternoon to make sure she would be sweet for today and all was good. So this seems like something that has popped up overnight.

Between the plug insulator and the metal part.
I misread. I was thinking between the wire insulation and the plug .

There should be no spark between the insulator and the metal.
The only thing will cause that is a cracked insulator.

Try some more plugs.

Bill, So I took your advise and went and got some new plugs. The bike started straight up but the spark does not look strong. I still have spark coming from the plug body (thread) when I put it near any metal. This is a real weird one. I am now wondering if this might be a symptom of ignitor breakdown? Any other experience with this?

Bump. Still looking for input about the spark jumping from the plug body to ground.To my way of thinking the bike should not run if this is happening as the spark is shorting straight to earth but it starts straight up no worries. I don't really want to ride it anywhere cause I dont want to get stuck on the side of the road with my leg still not any where near strong.

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I still have spark coming from the plug body (thread) when I put it near any metal

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If I'm reading correctly (Ya never know about me ), that's the way it should be. You're completing the circuit when you move it to ground, and breaking it when you move it away. You'll get an arc both ways. It'll also be jumping the gap, but you may not see or notice it. Especially if the gap's too tight.

How wide is your plug gap? Too wide and it won't jump the gap, too close and it'll be weak.
With high output coils (I think the nology are ) a wider gap is needed to take advantage of the potential voltage.

Checking the coil output is a good idea if you have a way to do it. But you said you get a strong blue spark when you break the circuit, so it sounds like they're OK.

Ignitor? maybe, but use up the simpler solutions first.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I think I might side gap the new plugs I bought and set the gap to 1mm as suggested. I still cant work out how both plugs would fail overnite. Must be the bloody shed gremlins playing havoc with me

Spark to the oil line, but not to the head? Might be a good idea to make sure there is a good earth (ground) connection between the engine and frame.

I will second the above sounds like a grounding problem.