ACT 200 No Spark.

[fixer2u]

Stator OHMs out at 208 ohms.
Puls generator tests ok.
Ran a test light at the connector between the red and black wire. When you pull it you get light.
Used the test light at the red and black wire up at the CDI and went to ground, I get light.
Ran the test light where the black and yellow wire meets the coil. I get light.
Tested the coil and it phms out within spec per the manual, but I get no light when I use the test light in line with the plug wire or if I remove the plug wire and go straight from the socked to the plug or engine....

What do I have going on here?

[Scootertrash]

Bad plug cap?

[fixer2u]

Forgot to mention that we got a different coil from a local guy here that came with a cap and wire. still no fire.....

[ps2fixer]

Light vs no light might not be detailed enough to fully diag the issue with the cdi/coil. Normally it's a work or doesn't work thing, but the CDI could have a weak capacitor, or the exciter coil isn't generating as high of a voltage as the coil needs (though the CDI).

Going for the simple things first though, you've tried a new NGK spark plug right? Also the green wire that bolts to the frame (likely coil mount) is clean surfaces for a solid ground?

The proper tool I think you might need is a "peak voltage tester" which hooks up to a multi meter. They are like $20-30 on ebay, very simple circuit to build at home if you're into that kind of thing, just a high voltage capacitor, a diode, a current limiting resister (protects cap), and a resister to slowly discharge the capacitor so no shocking users with up to 400v DC.

Normal spec for newer machines are all 100v min at cracking speed. My 350x which is from before the era that had that spec in the service manual tests at 80v.

If you want to take a stab in the dark, I'd blame it on a bad CDI, but the test in the manual isn't a 100% accurate test. If you know anyone with a similar machine from a similar year (pre 84, 84-85, or 86+) let me know and I can look up the CDI pin out and specs to see if they are similar enough to be used as a spark test.

Also, when you tested the coil, did you do it with the plug cap on or off? Might have the knip off 1/4 in off the end of the wire and screw the cap in to get into some fresh copper. The caps normally should test somewhere around 5k ohms higher than without.

[fixer2u]

For reference, the light tester I used needs at least 80V to light it up. I tested it on a fully charged car 12v auto battery and got no light.
Tried the new plug with no difference, I did clean the connection on the green wire that attaches to the frame via the coil mount, with no change.

I tested the coil both with the cap on and off, and with the plug wire on and off. It read the same either way.

[ps2fixer]

I see, based on that, then your exciter coil and CDI appear to be working, so it's between the coil and the spark plug/ground.

What year is your machine, and to make sure the full model is ATC200 right, not like a ATC200S, ATC200ES etc?

Encase you end up needing the plug cap, here's one that's for all of the ATC200 years, still in production.
https://www.partzilla.com/product/honda/30700-152-163?ref=633e1e9b595153a2cc8e3dd22dfa2c9303d9ea6f

Also just to make sure, when you're testing for spark, you're grounding the thread section of the spark plug right? Most people just lay it on the head, but a copper wire wrapped around it and bolted down would work too and be easier to see. It ultimately has to complete a circuit back to the coil where it bolts onto the frame.

[fixer2u]

This is a 1983 ACT200.

I was reading other posts about the stator and they say the resistance range should be 210 - 245 ohms. With mine being at 208 might I still be too low?

When I checked for spark, I just grounded it to the fins on the head.

A little more to the story I just found out from my brother (This is his machine)

Last fall I had dialog going with you on here about doing the LED headlight conversion with 4x6" light with high and low beam, and it was successfully done. That setup was on the machine and ran fine through the fall and my brother parked it for the winter. He did not take the little battery out, so it was dead in the spring. 2 weekends ago he drove it around with the dead battery in it but the lights seemed to work fine. but that battery would not seem to want to charge. He then took the machine home and took off the battery to charge it. HE then drove the machine around without the battery in it, everything seemed to be fine. He then plugged the fully charged battery in and tried to start it. That is when he had the no spark condition. The lights seem to be working as they should, except for that the low beam lights will flicker when you pull the cord, weather the light switch is on or off. I did test the switch and it seems to be working as it should.
Could plugging the battery in have caused something to fry?

After playing around with the machine a little more last night, I discovered that when the green wire that grounds with the coil on the frame is hooked up, you do not get light when running the test light between the yellow black wire and the coil. When you disconnect the the green wire, you do get light....

Might I have something shorting here? I traced the green wire and cannot fine anywhere it might be making contact. IT is just soooo odd that all was working before he hooked the battery back up.

[ps2fixer]

I'm wondering if something isn't hooked up quite right or something. 208 vs 210 ohms normally isn't enough of a difference to worry much about. It changes with temp and such though, colder temps would be lower ohms. These extra details makes a lot more sense now about the red wire because the machine doesn't normally have a stock red wire lol.

Let me have you run though a couple tests with the test light that needs over 12v to light up.

At the engine stator area there's 3 wires that come out, Yellow, Green, and Black with a red tube (sometimes sun fades to pink/white). Test would be from Engine/Frame ground to the black wire and pull the engine over (green wire on the harness side with the ring terminal bolted to the coil would work for the ground side too).

At the CDI connector there's 5 wires, Green, Blue/Yellow, Black/Red, Black, and Black/Yellow. With the stator hooked up and the coil ground bolted down, test between the green wire pin and the black/red wire pin. Should be the same thing, light up while cranking even though it's probably a pain to hold the probes and crank the engine.

Hook up the CDI again and at the ignition coil there's that green ring terminal and the black/yellow flag (spade style) connector. Disconnect the black/yellow wire and measure between that and the green wire, same setup should light up with the cranking speed.

For the above 3 tests, it's normally about 80-100v AC peak voltage, probably close to 60-80 AC voltage if you measured with a volt or multi meter.

For the battery situation, I can't recall if we settled on a charging system or not, like a voltage regulator/rectifier. The machine generates AC power between the Green and Yellow wires at the engine which wouldn't charge a battery. The most basic DC converter would be a large diode, a full wave rectifier doubles the output power with 4 diodes, and the voltage regulator keeps the max voltage from going over around 14.5v. For now it might be best to just disconnect the battery and get the machine running again, then trace out the wires and make sure all is being hooked up right and such.

The coil test you mentioned above doesn't seem to make sense, what I'm thinking is the AC/DC hook ups might have gotten switched around or both AC and DC sides of the regulator is grounded which would make a short though the regulator, but that's the lighting coil side, the exciter coil only goes to the CDI to fire the ignition coil.

Hopefully this helps us get in the right direction on figuring out the issue.

[fixer2u]

To be clear, in my first post where I said "red and black wire" I was referring to the "black with red tube" you mentioned coming out of the stator, only on this machine it is a wire with a red/black fiber sheath and the "red and black wire up at the CDI" is the same you mentioned as "black/red".

The machine is with my brother, so I will see if I can get him to try and run the tests you mentioned.

As for the light setup. Here is the link to the conversation. Our dialog is on page 2. http://www.3wheelerworld.com/showthread.php/187205-New-Headlight-Ideas-needed/page2?highlight=led+headlight


We went with the regulator/rectifier setup. FYI with all the testing I did above, the battery was removed and the light switch was in the off position.

[ps2fixer]

I see, thanks for clearing that up. I normally state the colors as like black/red because that's how it is on the Honda service manuals, basically translates to black wire with red stripe.

When you did the black/yellow wire test at the coil, was the wires hooked up to the coil? I just find it really weird no light when grounded, and light when not grounded. Only thing I can think of is with the green wire dis connected, you'd effectively have the coil disconnected, so the test light was seeing the full voltage like when testing at the engine connectors.

Thanks for the thread link, I'll have to give it a read over to refresh my memory. I was in the ER recently, so a bit slow using this laptop and such.

[fixer2u]

When I ran the black/yellow test, I unhooked the black/yellow wire from the spade connector. I placed one lead of the test light on the male spade and the other on the female. When the green wire was bolted in with the left hole on the coil, I got no light from the test light. I then took the green wire off and left it hang free but rebolted the coil down, I got light from the test light. In that situation isn't the coil still grounded to the frame? I have both bolts in the coil and tight. The backs and fronts of the bolt holes are both metal and making contact with the holes in the frame. I did take a file and made sure both the frame holes and the fronts and backs of both coil holes had a shiny metal surface.

I also noticed that if I loosely held the green wire to the left bolt of the coil, I would get a spark when pulling the recoil.

[ps2fixer]

That's really weird. I'm not sure how the regulator is hooked up, but in stock form, the green wire never touches the engine/frame ground except that ring terminal. It's almost a bad color/label, truly what it is, is the AC neutral wire, like the white wire for house electrical, but that's only for the lighting system. For the ignition system, technically after the CDI it's a DC power spike and the frame/green wire is the ground, and the spark plug wire is the hot wire (black/yellow before the ignition coil, which is basically just a step up transformer I'm pretty sure). The exciter coil is AC based and is internally ground to the engine, the black/red is the hot wire, the CDI stores the energy as DC in a capacitor and discharges to the coil.

I asked what my dad thought of your situation, and he suggested checking the gap on the pulse generator under the CDI cap. Makes sense it would ohm out fine but not work if it had too large of a gap.

[fixer2u]

Sorry for the super long delay, but life sadly got in the way of working on ATC's..... So my brother would up buying a cheapo China replacement CDI to see if that would work. He plugged it in and the ACT fired up first pull! Then just for shits and grins he tried out the other 2 coils he had gotten and all 3 of them worked just fine, so it was the CDI the whole time.

As far as the headlight wiring setup, I have a hunch the cheapo Rectifier/regulator I bought is not functioning correctly... I found a used rectifier off of a 1983 200E that I purchased for cheap off of e-bay and I am going to wire that bad boy in there to get some good ol Japanese parts in that machine and see if that makes a difference with the flickering issue.

[ps2fixer]

Yea the 200 series engines generally run alright on the China CDI since the ignition advancement is done mechanically and very little if any in the CDI.

Never hurts to switch to a good old school regulator, I don't think there's any parts in them that really go bad with time, just use/overloading etc. It's just some huge diodes, and an IC to control the voltage (shorts to ground when too high and byproduct is heat). Testing a regulator is fairly easy. If you have a battery in the machine (I didn't reread the thread), with the machine off, take a reading what battery voltage is (12.6v is the normal fully charged voltage), when you start the engine, the voltage should increase which means the magneto/stator is putting out power, and if the voltage regulator is working right, it should be under 15v even when you rev it up.

Without a battery, you just take a reading of the output voltage, can be at light connectors etc. Same story though, it should be under 15v max. Your multi meter might not like the rectified power too much so it might bounce around a lot, basically look for the highest voltage or get a peak voltage tester. The other option if you can back probe the regultor connectors is to take the AC reading from the magneto/stator on normally the two yellow wires, or yellow + green. Should be a similar story, under 15v. AC is measured a little different, so I'm not 100% sure if say 14.5v DC output would read as about 14.5V input, or if it would be lower (RMS reading) and peak voltage of ac is about 14.5V (plus losses, 2x diode voltage drop [1.4v] etc). The biggest thing is to not see like 20v+ when there's no load (lights off).


For the lights, I wouldn't be concerned so much about the flickering unless I misunderstood your orig post. I'd be more concerned why they are getting power with the switch off. Input power is generally yellow or black/brown, output to tail lights is brown and headlights is blue and white for bright/dim. Green is universal ground and should always have connection.

For the regulator when it comes in, do you need a connector for it, or do you already have one? The ATC200E regulator is 4 pin, and basically 2 pins are the AC input, and 2 pins are the full wave rectified DC and voltage regulated output. The yellow wires or green+yellow wires from the stator should go directly to the regulator input, and the harness only gets the output wires. The AC side and DC side can not both use frame ground. The 185/200(s) models should all be safe for this since they don't internally ground the stator, the 200x for example does.

[Wbeverly07]

Glad u got it going again i had a similar problem on my 83 200s it ended being the gap in the pulse generator all along i could have easily shoved a nickle in that thing lol

[fixer2u]

Should the case of the regulator/rectifier be grounded to the frame?

[ps2fixer]

Typically the regulator doesn't use the housing as a ground since normally there's a dedicated wire running to it.

Which regulator did you get? The Chinese ones on ebay appear to not regulate voltage, just rectify the power. I bought an OEM TaoTao one for a customer and it does the same thing the other 4 regulators I got from china does, high rpm it hit over 16v. In the case of an LED light bar, they probably can take quite a bit higher voltage depending on how the power supply circuit is designed/rated. If you're using a normal tail light, it will work at the higher voltages, but will have a shorter life. If you throw a battery in the mix, then the battery is likely to be overcharged and boil some of the acid away, in the context of a sealed lead acid, this is a bad thing. For a normal flooded lead acid (type that has the caps to check the acid level), you just have to keep the acid topped up with distilled water and it should last for a while.

Also, it doesn't hurt to mount the regulator where it can get some air too so it can cool well.

[fixer2u]

I now have a regulator from a 200e to use instead of the china replacement I bought. So I was wondering if the frame needed to be grounded. I have not wired it in the machine yet.


I know what you mean about the Tao Tao... I just bought a brand new Tao Tao 125 and right out of the crate the rectifier was charging at 17V! (The dealer I bought it from refused to pay for it in full even though it was defective from the factory, but that's another story....) It fried the brand new battery within 10 minutes of riding. I actually wired in another 200E rectifier I had laying around in there and it works like a charm. Charges at 14.5V and the machine has been running well the last 2 months.

[ps2fixer]

Sadly, it seems the chinese ones are all defective, I had 3 different models, all the same connector, and all 3 do the same thing and all are new. They were from when I was researching trying to find a suitable aftermarket regulator for making a DC power kit for the 185/200 series machines.

For the 200E regulator in the China quad, did you have to shuffle the pins around, or was it already the right pin out? Sadly there's not really accurate diagrams for the Chinese quads, just generic ones and I haven't traced the wires out to see how exactly it's wired.

Anyway, just to confirm, the ATC200E regulator does not require the housing to be grounded according to the service manual.

[fixer2u]

I did have to shuffle the pins around, I was able to find a diagram on a tao tao riders forum and it was spot on. I was even able to use the Honda connector with the taotao by just breaking off the plastic "knob" for lack of a better term that locks the male to the female.

For the 200E regualtor, I was just wondering if my flickering issue may have had something to do with the fact that I did not ground the case of the china rectifier and if doing so with the 200E regulator might help the situation?

[ps2fixer]

The regulator converts the AC to "Rectified" DC. Most people have seen the AC power wave where it goes above and blow 0v, rectified DC is the same, but when it normally goes below 0v, it goes back up, so it's kind of looks like hops. The gully between each voltage increase can make lights flicker and such. Actually let me grab some photos from the net to better show it.

Typical AC power looks like this.
https://www.teamwavelength.com/wp-content/uploads/alternating-1024x597.png

When you run it though a full wave rectifier, it looks like this. It's counted as DC, but isn't solid on power like a battery.
https://www.teamwavelength.com/wp-content/uploads/rectified-1024x597.png

A capacitor could be used to filter the power, but I'm not deep enough into electronics to know what size/rating would be needed.

https://www.teamwavelength.com/wp-content/uploads/rectifiedcapacitor-1024x597.png

LED's turn on and off very fast, so at low RPM, you'll probably see the flicker, I see the flicker even with normal headlights when running a machine w\o a battery. Once you get to a higher RPM the frequency increases, or in other words, it turns on/off faster. Somewhere around 30 flashes per second looks like solid light for most people which should be around 900 rpm (two peaks per cycle if I'm thinking right, if not then 1800rpm for 1 flash per revolution of the engine).

Hopefully this all made sense. Instead of a capacitor, a small battery can be used too. It's just for filtering power, so just needs enough ability to light the lights for a short time to be pleny for filtering the power. I'd say like a 4ah sealed lead acid would work well, and is small enough to find a mounting spot on the machine (best to build a battery box to hold it). Don't need big wires going to it or anything, same size as what comes out of the engine would be fine (pretty sure that would be 18 gauge).