No Spark...Need Help

[nlove4ever]

My husband owns a 2001 Honda CR250. While he was riding it up a hill it died on him. When he did some checking he figured out that there was no spark. He changed the spark plugs and it still did not work. So, he bought a manual for testing and he performed some tests. All the testing on the res was ok, no voltage and grounds were ok. The only thing he found was that the coil res was .1 ohm out of range (high.) Previously we had the coil tested by a shop and they said it was fine. We have heard everything from the ICM, the Stator and the Coil could be bad. Do you have any idea's? We hate to take it to a shop because we have had nothing but bad luck with the Honda dealers service.

 

[reelrazor]

There are actually three 'coils' involved. The spark coil(hooked to the spark plug directly and fires the plug), the trigger coil/module(says "when" to fire), and the stator coil(makes all the bike's electrical power).

The stator is the most failure prone part. The manual should have a test procedure for it, i.e. a resistance value through it. That resistance value can be correct through the stator but the stator can still be bad. Usually though, you can identify a bad stator by looking for continuity to ground through the charge wires. Unplug the harness going to the stator(stator is under the flywheel). Don't confuse the stator with the pickup/trigger coil (next to but not under the flywheel). Using an ohm meter, put one lead on one of the two wires going to the stator, put the other on an engine ground. There should be no continuity( 'OL' or 0 on the meter). Keeping one lead on ground, switch the other lead to the second stator wire and check, there should be NO continuity there either. There should be continuity from wire to wire THROUGH the stator.

A stator will often show a 'no spark failure' that goes away when the bike cools off a few(or many) times before dying completely. Unfortunately a bad/broken wire will do the same.

The same goes for the trigger coil, it should NOT allow a ground path through either of its' wires.

Whichever one does is bad, replace it, or you may find an electrical shop who will rewind the stator, or use this opportunity to put lights on the bike and get a lighting coil/stator unit.

DO NOT overlook simple stuff like a crapped out kill switch, if you have to cut the wires leading to it and try the bike for spark with them 'open' and wired together.

 

[nlove4ever]

Reelrazor-
Thank you so much for your help!!!! :)

 

[reelrazor]

No problem, my bill is in the mail ;-)

Good luck.

p.s. the cdi (ICM) box is the least likely to fail but the most often uneccesarily(incorrect diagnosis) replaced item you mentioned.