Triumphrat

Jodel

My Tbird started to exhibit some of the 'dying coil' symptoms described at various times on this forum - i.e. felt like a fuel problem, but was really electrical. The bike is only 2.5 years old and has 10K miles on it from new. Here's what I found in case it helps others diagnose problems....

Checking obvious stuff like valve clearances, carb synching, tight electrical connections etc. was all done prior to changing out any components.

When starting from cold on full choke, the engine used to race until you backed off the choke. Recently, you could tell the mixture was plenty rich but the engine was reluctant to rev and it took a bit of churning to light the fires.

When warm, the idle rpm was slightly erratic. 'Blipping' the throttle very slightly could actually make the engine stop, although 'giving it a handful' was fine. Pulling away from rest you got the sense of just a slight mis-fire, but then the engine picked up and ran cleanly. This slight mis-fire got gradually worse in heavy traffic with the engine hot and was repeatable at every stop light. On the overrun, instead of a fairly even popping/burbling from the exhaust, the sound was more of a 'nasty' spitting noise. Since I'll shortly be heading off for a trip to the French alps, the last thing I wanted was the bike to quit at low revs on an Alpine hairpin bend and dump me on the road - so I wasn't prepared to wait and see how much worse things would get.

My bike has a British Gill ignition system, but I had sourced a couple of spare German PVL coils on eBay. I ordered another new PVL coil and PVL pick-up coil from Sprint Manufacturing (delivered next day - great service). I replaced all three coils and pick up coil with the PVL units - instant improvement. The engine now fires up immediately, pulls cleanly, idles very smoothly and is essentially back to how it should be.

Those on this board who have posted about their experiences with Gill coils 'fading away' have my thanks, as the coils still measure OK on a meter, but the PVL set works much better. I now hope the Gill ignitor unit lasts a bit longer than the coils!