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Twins Technical Talk Technical Talk for Hinckley Triumph Twins: Bonneville, T100, Speedmaster, America, Thruxton, and Scrambler.

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Old 07-19-2008, 10:23 PM   #1 (permalink)
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Question Electrical / ignition problem

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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Old 07-20-2008, 01:20 AM   #2 (permalink)
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bumpity bump
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Old 07-20-2008, 02:49 PM   #3 (permalink)
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the more jump the spark has to take the hotter the coil will put out.best guess is your coil is weak or spark is grounding out somewhere it shouldnt.
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Old 07-21-2008, 06:09 AM   #4 (permalink)
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That is weird.I was going to say plug,until you said you tried it with a new plug.I don't think it's a bad coil either,because a bad coil wouldn't jump that big gap.Plus you'd probably only have the problem on one side.Got to think about this one for a while.Looks like it's got everyone else stumped too.At least this will give you a bump.
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Old 07-21-2008, 12:27 PM   #5 (permalink)
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Your America has two coils I believe, I would still think coil. I had a bad coil on a Bonny and it showed spark it was just intermittant but still bad.
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Old 07-21-2008, 12:58 PM   #6 (permalink)
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Ignition Problem one cylinder not firing

I had a very similiar problem. The right cylinder would stop firing on occasion when the bike got warm (2006 America). Dealer said the coil was bad and replaced it. That didn't fix the problem and after 3 weeks got I got mad and replaced all electrical components (pickup coil, cdi box, and both coils). Problem is gone now and I think it was the cdi all along.
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Old 07-21-2008, 01:02 PM   #7 (permalink)
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Like Bleach said if a problem happens when it warms up you can assume it is electrical.
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Old 07-22-2008, 01:34 AM   #8 (permalink)
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If it's a bad coil,or coils,how does the spark jump a big 1/2 gap,but not fire the plugs? That's what has me baffled.
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Old 07-22-2008, 11:09 AM   #9 (permalink)
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When I checked my spark on my Bonnie it sparked across to the engine also but with an inconsistant spark in conjunction with the ignition it wouldn't fire, so a bad coil can still fire but everything has to fire together or nothing works so if the coil is firing intermittantly that could be it. Just like on an old bike with points, if the gap is too big or small you get hard or no starting.

My coil sparked so strong that I ruled that out as a problem but finally after taking the bike to the dealer they swapped a coil and it fire up. This is just a possibility but worth checking. Baboon any warranty left?
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Last edited by Iceseven; 07-22-2008 at 11:16 AM.
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