CDI Issues. Or so I think.

Hey everyone quick question... so I rewired my bike from scratch because my harness was trash. I watched a few good videos and looked up some diagrams. But anyways. I’m not getting spark. I’m getting power TO my coils and TO the CDI. So here’s my question. My orange and grey (secondary wires) on both coils are HOT when they key is on. I read on here somewhere that only the red/white striped wire should be hot when they key is on and the CDI grounds those (grey and orange) wires and intermittently ungrounds them, producing spark. So is that true? Should they be getting power when I only have turned the key on? Thanks for the help. It’s appriciated.

 

The ignition box should turn off power after a few second as not to burn the coils. It will the turn it on again when you hit the start button. Have you checked ohms on coils? Spark plug caps ?
A bad signal from pickup coils will kill spark. Or if you still have the start relay and side stand relay, they can also cause a problem.

 

Will it turn power off to the whole thing? Or just the orange/grey wires? Because they’re staying hot. I checked my ohms for my coils and they’re steady at 2.8. Which is a little bit high but not too much out of range. And I also checked my pickups and they’re also in range. 650 is where they should be? And mine are at 655-660. I don’t have the side stand relay or start relay. I just did a minimum wiring job.

 

Just power to coils is interrupted.

 

So I’m still confused. Should those wires be getting constant power or no?

 

With the bike not running the orange and grey wire should be at 12V to protect the ignition coil primaries.

The TCI initially powers up with either the gray or orange low - usually grey in my experience. After a couple of seconds it is designed so that if no input from the pick-up coil is sensed (engine turning) it goes to a standby state. +12v on the high side of the coil (R/W) and +12V on the low side (orange or grey) means no current will flow and consequently the ignition coil primary will not overheat. During actual operation the low time (orange and gray) is measured in milliseconds with a low duty cycle. The result is the average current through the coil primary during operation (engine running) does not overheat the coil priamary.

And just to be sure you did not connect the terminal with the B/W wire to ground. It should be left open unless you have a side stand relay.

 

Thanks for all the information. You really know your stuff aha. It’s nice. The only ground I have is the black wire coming from the terminals with the r/w and grey and orange wires. The other ones are not grounded. I’m just stumped at why I’m not getting spark. I’m getting power all the way up to the coils. And everything is in spec. I don’t know what I’m missing.