Need Help. What would you do? Surging and power loss

Update! .....I received the 2 new spark plug caps and installed them on the left side of the bike (1/3) cylinders and was able to see spark now.....so with great excitement I fired up the bike and it seemed to sound much better. I decided to ride it and see how it goes........still missing, and "surging", but running. I go back to my garage and decide to take a look at the (2/4) side and could NOT see a spark!!!! I don't get it at all now! I must be only running on two cylinders. I had not touched a thing since I ordered the plug caps for the (1/3) side.

I highly suspect that the bike did not need new plug caps. MY QUESTION....is there something that draws power from the harness to the coils that can create this flip flop situation? Is there something that regulates the power coming to the coils? Spark plugs new, coils new, spark plug caps replaced on the 1/3 side.

I would to get solid spark to all cylinders before I pull off on this theory that this is electrical. Don't know what to do next.
 
sorry to hear you're having so many problems with this, are you sure you're testing the spark reliably?

BTW, the left side of the bike while sitting on the seat is the 2/4 cylinders, not 1/3 like you mention above, so we have to be consistent with that. By any chance did you put the new spark plug caps on the side that was already working?

Also, while we're at it, when you installed the new coils did you put the correct connector on the 1/3 side coil and 2/4 coil, they're not interchangeable AFAIK. The pulse generator is cylinder agnostic, but it feeds the ICU and that sends the pulse back to the individual coils so I think that the connectors from the ICU need to be on the correct coils or it may not work properly. The fact that they color code each wire to the coil suggests there is a correct pattern that needs to be followed, but I've never done any troubleshooting on this so I can't say for sure.

Maybe you could pull one of the new plug caps off the 1/3 side and put it on the 2/4 side and see if you can get it to spark on at least one cylinder on each side. The fact that your spark seems to migrate from side to side for no apparent reason seems odd, and I have no explanation for that. All I can suggest is to make sure all the connections are tight and clean at the coils, that the plug wires are inserted into the coils properly, and the wires are inserted into the plug caps properly.

Finally, the wire is the cheapest part of all, but you haven't replaced the wires on any of the cylinders. I can't say that would help anything, but you could replace all 4 wires at an auto parts store for around $10 or less, and remove that variable. Given the age of these bikes there's no downside to replacing cheap stuff like that just in case.
 
Having finally figured out how to get my 13 onto the center stand and successfully removing four pieces of plastic, I consider myself something of an old hand at this stuff now, not to make light of how frustrating this has become, if it's any consolation, my foray into the 13 is now on hold pending my Jeep popping out of second gear, not gonna be cheap, and... ever been on the Jeep forum? Yeah, not like this site, lots of guys like me though, plenty of laughs at least.

Just going through the sequence of events it seems initially when you got it the bike ran for a substantial period trouble free and the severity of the surge / power loss is that when it's doing it it's undrivable to the point that you knew to try to head immediately for home or get it towed. I'd be curious if anyone with a well running 11 would be or has been bold enough to disconnect one plug lead and drive around a bit; bet it runs better than you're experiencing.

I'm thinking an even firing four cylinder torque pattern is pretty smooth, and at 3,000 plus rpm and moderate load, how rough would it get; this intermittent fault sounds real rough so I'm thinking when it happens it's a for sure two cylinder problem; I know that's maybe been established already, but I think you'd drive it home on three and it won't run on one.

Makes me think of dwalby above and rethink of Christian_64 and his reference to his attached wiring article, and the harness wiring to the coil which will always affect two cylinders, and if that's in and out erratically there's going to be a bit of extra fuel around to aggravate ____ maybe surge a bit when it refires.
As well, I don't think you've mentioned a lot of evidence of unburned fuel, not sure.

In the course of twenty years not everyone has carefully disconnected and reconnected things, a point where most of the strands beneath the insulation are broken, or a nasty nick along the harness somewhere you can't see that leaks to ground under certain circumstances. During the course of trying to resolve the problem and riding the bike stranded flexible wiring moves a bit and maybe a close break opens a bit further or sets a bit closer enabling everything to work.

Short of abandoning the existing harness segments I wonder if you could temporarily shunt all wiring going to each coil with stranded equivalent or even wire one size less, might be able to strip an opening in the insulation to splice or use one of those horrible crimp on splicer connections furthest from the coils and capping it off afterwards, then just run it on the center stand, if there's a compromise concealed under the insulation I think the intermittent current to the coil will find it's way through the shunt, but obviously won't help if it's a nick in the insulation, that possibility I'll bet is low, sounds like by now lots of trained eyeballs have examined the seeable possibilities.
 
Guess we all feel a bit invested in this. If I read and understood this right the coils just fire all the time (whether on compression stroke or not). Despite everything else you’ve already done and not touching it since changing two new plug caps has seemingly restored a spark on 2 & 4 but now the other side are playing up? I would buy two more new ones and just see.
 
i would replace all 4 plug wires and other 2 plug caps. that way you are no longer "guessing". You have replaced almost all of the high voltage side of the ignition, replace the remaining components and be certain that it is correct so you can continue trouble shooting other areas.
 
Chris09 said:
Having finally figured out how to get my 13 onto the center stand and successfully removing four pieces of plastic, I consider myself something of an old hand at this stuff now, not to make light of how frustrating this has become, if it's any consolation, my foray into the 13 is now on hold pending my Jeep popping out of second gear, not gonna be cheap, and... ever been on the Jeep forum? Yeah, not like this site, lots of guys like me though, plenty of laughs at least.

Just going through the sequence of events it seems initially when you got it the bike ran for a substantial period trouble free and the severity of the surge / power loss is that when it's doing it it's undrivable to the point that you knew to try to head immediately for home or get it towed. I'd be curious if anyone with a well running 11 would be or has been bold enough to disconnect one plug lead and drive around a bit; bet it runs better than you're experiencing.

I'm thinking an even firing four cylinder torque pattern is pretty smooth, and at 3,000 plus rpm and moderate load, how rough would it get; this intermittent fault sounds real rough so I'm thinking when it happens it's a for sure two cylinder problem; I know that's maybe been established already, but I think you'd drive it home on three and it won't run on one.

Makes me think of dwalby above and rethink of Christian_64 and his reference to his attached wiring article, and the harness wiring to the coil which will always affect two cylinders, and if that's in and out erratically there's going to be a bit of extra fuel around to aggravate ____ maybe surge a bit when it refires.
As well, I don't think you've mentioned a lot of evidence of unburned fuel, not sure.

In the course of twenty years not everyone has carefully disconnected and reconnected things, a point where most of the strands beneath the insulation are broken, or a nasty nick along the harness somewhere you can't see that leaks to ground under certain circumstances. During the course of trying to resolve the problem and riding the bike stranded flexible wiring moves a bit and maybe a close break opens a bit further or sets a bit closer enabling everything to work.

Short of abandoning the existing harness segments I wonder if you could temporarily shunt all wiring going to each coil with stranded equivalent or even wire one size less, might be able to strip an opening in the insulation to splice or use one of those horrible crimp on splicer connections furthest from the coils and capping it off afterwards, then just run it on the center stand, if there's a compromise concealed under the insulation I think the intermittent current to the coil will find it's way through the shunt, but obviously won't help if it's a nick in the insulation, that possibility I'll bet is low, sounds like by now lots of trained eyeballs have examined the seeable possibilities.
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There is an ecu on top of your head lamp and the two wires that arrive at the coils, through the 3wire connector that you have renewed (you have haven't you?) come from there. I would find that, unplug it and check them two wires for resistance and inspect the terminals in the ecu, also try and trace the harness from ecu to coils and inspect it for damage. If they show nothing, I'd take the ecu off and get it tested. The earth wires from the coils, I think, go down the right side and earth near the side stand. Check that but, as the fault varies and moves it's unlikely to be that side of the coils (unless the fault is where the wires from the two coils join)...I wish I were there!.... Swede
 
Okay EVERYONE, thanks for all of the ideas. I'm going to re-check EVERYTHING. I think I'm going to bite the bullet and take the whole upper fairing off. So far I have been removing the bracket with the coils on it through a small opening behind what I will call the steering yoke. Dawlby I don't think I hooked the wires coming from the former 3P connector to the coils wrong. This is because as you sit on the bike and look at that wire it is shorter to reach the coil that has the male spade lugs on the coil that protrude to the left. It's a little longer to go around to the right side to connect to the male spade lugs on the other coil that protrude to the right. However you describe it right by saying the spark moves from right to left for no apparent reason. HOWEVER, I will reverse the connection to see if your right This pulse generation through the ICU seems an interesting theory. Swede mentioned an ecu over the headlamp.....is this the same as ICU? ECU...electronic control unit? ICU...ignition control unit? But I guess I have to take the upper fairing off to check that as well.

I am not to buy new caps (another $50 bucks), because the too remaining light the spark plug. The HT wires do not need to be replaced because the wires that came with the coil are new. I have trimmed a few mm of the ends because of repeated removals of the spark plug caps to ensure a good connection and I do see spark.

Back to the garage...
 
I suspect if you have the coil connector wires reversed the bike wouldn't even run, but thought I'd ask anyway. The blue wire should go to the 2/4 coil and yellow to the 1/3 coil. You should examine those blue and yellow wires (and the black one) closely for any signs of broken insulation, etc.
 
Dwalby, I did have the wires reversed. The pic I send is now correct. What I didn't realize is that it matters how you install the coils on the bracket so that the connections coming from the 3P connector can reach the coils. I let the incorrect position on the bracket drive how the harness connection with spade lugs reached the bracket and therefore I connected it wrong.

It worries me that you said it shouldn't run. Note the position of the black wires...is that okay? Some mentioned their is no polarity on the coils. I have the black on the top spade lug of each coil.

I learned the hard way that taking off the upper (front) fair does nothing IMHO in getting to the coils.
 
ScottyG said:
Okay EVERYONE, thanks for all of the ideas. I'm going to re-check EVERYTHING. I think I'm going to bite the bullet and take the whole upper fairing off. So far I have been removing the bracket with the coils on it through a small opening behind what I will call the steering yoke. Dawlby I don't think I hooked the wires coming from the former 3P connector to the coils wrong. This is because as you sit on the bike and look at that wire it is shorter to reach the coil that has the male spade lugs on the coil that protrude to the left. It's a little longer to go around to the right side to connect to the male spade lugs on the other coil that protrude to the right. However you describe it right by saying the spark moves from right to left for no apparent reason. HOWEVER, I will reverse the connection to see if your right This pulse generation through the ICU seems an interesting theory. Swede mentioned an ecu over the headlamp.....is this the same as ICU? ECU...electronic control unit? ICU...ignition control unit? But I guess I have to take the upper fairing off to check that as well.

I am not to buy new caps (another $50 bucks), because the too remaining light the spark plug. The HT wires do not need to be replaced because the wires that came with the coil are new. I have trimmed a few mm of the ends because of repeated removals of the spark plug caps to ensure a good connection and I do see spark.

Back to the garage...
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I don't think plug caps are the problem but to check, just take the cap off the lead of the one with weak (or no) spark and turn it over. If it's better, it's the cap, if not then it isn't. Check all I said previously, the fault has to be in that area! I'm quite good at this sort of thing, I've been doing it since I was twelve and that makes it about sixty five years!... Swede ps. When you ride it am I right in thinking it has lack of power and goes fast and slow(surges) but doesn't misfire ie cut out on one or two cylinders and then cut back in again?
 
it seems unlikely that it would run given the differences in timing between the 4 cylinders if you had the wires reversed, but who knows?

the way you have it shown in the photo is correct based on the wiring diagram, the black wire is common to both, and there's no polarity on the terminals that I'm aware of.

The ICU generates a low voltage pulse across the coil primary winding (the blue/yellow/black connector side), and that voltage is amplified into a high voltage pulse across the secondary winding (the spark plug wire side) that jumps to ground through the spark plug. There's no notion of ground on the coils themselves that I am aware of, and a Google search seems to confirm that. You can also experiment with reversing the connections between the yellow/black on 1/3 and blue/black on 2/4 just to see if it makes any difference, but I don't think it should. The schematic in the Honda manual shows the black wires attached to the same side of each coil, like you have done above, but I'm not sure that's actually necessary.

Now that you have it all apart can you experiment a bit with tugging on wires while its running to see if anything changes? Or do you have to put everything back together again to start the bike and can't reach the wires after that?

Also wanted to ask if the new coil wires were already attached when you received them, or if you installed them yourself. If they came pre-installed remove and re-seat them to make sure there's a good connection at that end of the plug wire.
 
Reinstalled the bracket with the coils as photographed. Still no spark on the (1/3) side! Even with rotating the new caps to that side.

I did not take apart the coil and see if the pre-installed wires on the (1/3) side were a good connection. Visually and touching they seemed very solid...I didn't want to create a problem.

I taken the bracket and coil out about 4 times....it's in a hard spot. I have to put everything back together for wire tugging, testing, etc. I've pulled the whole front fairing off and with my manual it's not easy to really to see the ICU.

My thought is that it's time to pour some whiskey.
 
can you get to the coil blue/yellow/black wires with a multimeter while the bike is running?

This is a hack, but might be worth a try. Put your multimeter in AC mode, and measure the voltage across the blue/black terminals (those are getting spark on 2/4, right?) Then do the same across the yellow/black terminals and see if you get about the same voltage. What you really need is a scope to see what's happening with the pulses, but if the meter can respond to the pulses it will display some sort of voltage based on how strong the pulses are and how frequent they are. So what you're measuring is basically nonsense, but if both coils are getting the same response from the ICU they should both read the same nonsense voltage, or very close.
 
Chris09 said:
My thoughts the same, time for a step back.
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with new coils, wires, and plug caps if there's no spark from one of the coils then assuming he's grounding the plugs properly then the coil isn't getting the ignition pulses from the ICU, or they're weak and/or intermittent. I'm assuming if he can verify spark on one side successfully, he's gotta be doing the same test on the other side, so testing method error doesn't seem likely.
 
I wonder also if while testing the battery condition is dropping if that presents another changing variable; I might connect try to monitor DC volts [multimeter with aligator clips - no hands required] during the cranking phase and see if there is any correlation between good better or worse voltage and spark, or maybe you've already got that sorted. I work on a lot of boiler problems and sometimes when you're watching three things at that critical period, a fourth you aren't monitoring is going sideways on you.

Just to throw some things out there maybe one idea leads to another, sometimes plug gap will increase over time or be too wide, could try laying out all four plugs for a photo and post, maybe someone will see something, try a compression test across all four, see if there's anyway to check initial timing and verify some advance is occurring. Too many guys here would already know if maybe a new belt could have been installed incorrectly changing the valve timing just enough to destroy your mind, and they don't stretch.

Although you haven't got a scope but I think if you could clip a timing light on each lead the strobe intensity may reflect spark intensity.

If you know anyone with an old anlogue multimeter you may be able to connect DC Volts across the primary of the coils ]wish I would have kept my old Simpson] and see a bouncing needle pattern, see if the same on each coil. Another thing there is primary of coil not only needs correct applied voltage but complete colapse of voltage to induce secondary voltage, don't know if you're not able to make a clean break if you will.

If it's a weak signal to the coils, I wonder if you could crush the spark plug gap, I did that on a weak stator and it seemed to solve everything, [which really told me my problem was obvious[ but maybe with only 2/3 gap and low rpm everything gets silky smooth because you just don't need as much energy, but don't rev it up.

Don't know what there is on the mechanical side, I had a bearing fail in a distributor one time on my honda luckily I noticed a small bit of what looked like carbon when I removed the horizontal distributor cap which turned out to be part of the iron core that passes one of the pick up coils.
 
UPDATE! Real progress made yesterday! I was trying to figure this out again and decided to have another go at it. I read through the entire post to see and if missed anything and then did some more searching to learn more about the ICM. I came across a thread from 2009 - called " ST1100 ignition problem NOT solved Yet!!" In that thread it had the attached picture of the wiring harness to the coils. I inspected mine AGAIN and could see no problems, but use my voltmeter to test continuity of each wire and connection and I found that the ground to (1/3) did not have continuity. I cut of the spade lug connector and crimped on a new connector and then I got continuity I needed! Put it all back together ands visible saw spark to all cylinders!

I said progress....but I haven't ridden it yet! Although the bike is running, it is running very rough my guess is that I need to tune the carburetors. I could get it to idle at about 1000 - 1100 rpm but when I try to apply throttle it would die. It acted a little better if I applied a about 1/2 choke and I could get the rpms up higher and then it might drop out. My guess is that it's running lean? Is this solved by synchronization of the carburetors or are there other things I need to consider?

Thanks to GitSum from the UK for this picture in the 2009 post and ChucksKLRST from Aurora Colorado who posted on the same thread that he had the same problem with a spade lug crimp connector. The weird thing is they posted Dec 21, 2009.....11 years to the day that found their post and solved my ignition problem.

And of course all of you in this thread who have been patient.



ignition.jpg
 
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