ignition coils and plug leads

Im having a bit of a problen starting my bike, xj650 maxim 1981, can some wise owl give me the firing order and what ht lead goes to which plug
it sounds like I have a ht lead on the wrong plug, I cannot see how its started to play up and the manual is no help, also where do the leads off the ignition coils go and in what order if you know what I mean
thanks again for the help.

 

Firing order is irrelevant, as there is no distributor to speak of. Rather, you have two coils, which each have two wires. When a given coil fires, it sparks both wires at the same time.

If you pull the tank, you should see the coils. Typically the left-hand coil plugs into cylinders 1 and 4, and has red/white and orange wires going to the harness. On the right is the other, which plugs into the 2 and 3 cylinders. It gets its power from red/white and gray wires.

If you're having trouble starting, what you may want to do is check to see if the windings are within specification as far as resistance values. Grab an ohmmeter/multimeter and set it to x1 range. Unplug the connector from the wiring harness and measure across the leads going to the coil. They should read about 2.5 ohms.

Next, unscrew the plug cap from the ends of both wires, set the meter to the 1K scale, and measure wire to wire. It should read about 11K ohms.

Do this for both coils. If either one falls outside of spec -- I had one of my secondary windings measure as 80K -- then the coil will have to be replaced.

This file, while meant for replacing the existing coils with new Dynas, should give you some idea as to what's what.

 

Moving thread to correct forum.