Are my coils blown?

[brocrusher]

So my friends suzki gt185 stopped working. It no longer will start. We could tell electrical was working but we could get the engine to turnover. We saw initially that one of the boots for the spark plugs was gone and figured it was because of this reason perhaps they might have been having engine trouble. Got a spark plug test and tested the boots and got no response. traced the wires up to the coils and everything going into the coils seems to work and gives us a response. That being said anything leaving the coils goes dead. We tried starting the engine a few times and nothing. The coils seemed really warm and we noticed their to appear what looked like burn marks. Unsure though because the bike is super old and it could just be grime. Can anyone think of a way for us to properly test this?


this is the plug that connects to the coils. the ones with the arrows would indicate live. The ones on the bottom did nothing. Tops were connected to a black and white wire which seemed to be positive and negative(i think) the bottom plugs were both orange.



This looks like burn marks to me but again I am not sure. could just be grime. Perhaps some one with better eyes could identify it?


this is the other coil. you can see that it has some marks on it but we scratched some of it off trying to tell whether it was grime or dirt.

[xscorex]

I'm not sure we were testing the coils correctly. with a test light and with the bike on we have power running into the coils on the orange wires. Nothing on the black wires, nothing comes out of the plug wires when cranking. I didn't even look at the points to see if something is grounding out there. what should we look for. The coils are hot even though the bike isn't running. The bike is a two stroke gt185, there is no fuse box except one main power fuse which is weird.

[xscorex]

I know there are some dudes on here that now more about coils than I do. I tried pouring water on em. didnt help

[brocrusher]

bump

[s0mekid]

test for ac voltage to any good ground but if there hot then the resin in the coils is more than likely melted and you should replace them. do you have 12 + volts going to them?

[thelowlife]

You can test the resistance on the main and secondary of the coils. Use a multimeter and not a test light to figure out what the actual voltage TO the coils. Using a test light TO the coils may tell you that there is voltage there but it may not be enough voltage to actually create a spark.

Check the points if you aren't getting enough voltage.

[Jetblack]

just replace those old shitty things, coils can be had for cheap all over... no reason to bang your head against the wall hoping to get some life out of those things, even if you did theyd prolly shit out on you in less than a week.

[Sky]

Do you get a signal from the ignition? (cdi box or points?)
That's the black wire.
You can bench test coils
1) multi-meter, check your manual for ohm specs
2) spark test
hook the coil positive to the positive post
spark-plug-wire and spark-plug to coil tower
plug body to the negative post
then momentarily touch the coils negative wire the the negative post (quick)
Should throw a spark across the plug gap
Dont shock yourself