need some help with an electrical problem

[saskredneck]

My Honda 200S recently died on me and I wasn't getting spark. So after a quick diagnosis and a dig through my parts room I swapped ignition coils and I was riding again. Well I was riding for a whole half hour then it died again and yet again no spark. Why am I burning out ignition coils? I need this bike running soon for hunting season.

[kb0nly]

You sure your burning out coils? In my experience thats a clear indication of a bad CDI box. Intermittent spark is almost always the CDI, when you swapped the coil the first time you might have bumped the CDI which has a bad connection, check and clean the connection to the CDI and if you have a spare replace it.

[saskredneck]

Cleaned the cdi and nothing and swapped out two spares I had and still no progress

[belly]

Check your nut on the fly wheel. I had one come loose one time and it wasn't lined up correctly with the pick up point.

[Howdy]

You could have a loose connection or broken wire on the exciter coil. The exciter coils are the first thing I check when I have weak or no spark. And most of the time I find thats where the problem is.
Howdy

[saskredneck]

The wiring harness is good just finished checking it. But now it has spark for the first pull on the rope and then nothing and I have to change out the cdi. Went through 3 cdi's today with zero progress.so now I'm left with thinking its the exciter coil. How many ohms for the test?

[kb0nly]

It could be the exciter coil now then... Check it with a voltmeter while cranking the engine over to see if your getting voltage out, you can ohm it out but that won't tell you the whole story. I like to check the voltage output and use a test light to chase through the ignition wiring.

The last post about changing the CDI to get one spark then its nothing until you swap the CDI again makes me think a connection problem, loose wire, something up at the CDI but hard to say. I have been through quite a few of them with spark related problems, i generally find a bad connection or a bad CDI. Start at the exciter coil and work your way through the ignition system checking every connection and following the voltage checks at each item, Exciter, Pulse Gen, CDI, Coil, etc.

If you need a manual for the wiring diagram click the link in my signature below for my manual server.

[saskredneck]

I was thinking it was a bad connection but the wiring is all good and the connections I made sure were good and tried connecting and reconnecting before swapping cdi's. Hopefully tomorrow I can take a look at the exciter but am busy fixing the womans sled now so we can go for a ride this weekend.

[Howdy]

Have you checked the CDI advancer on the end of the cam? Just reading your 1 spark then nothing reply tells me the advancer might be bad. If you need one let me know I have a few.
Howdy

[kb0nly]

Good point Howdy... He could have a bad advancer....

[saskredneck]

Changed the advancer out 3 times with spares I have that I know were good when I tore the engines down they came off.

[Ofenback]

I'm new here so excuse the late / silly sounding reply but, did you ever
Figure out what the problem was?
I'm having very similar issues with my 84 200es.
I bough the nicest one i could find cuz i'm not well versed in how these motors operate and after a perfect
test drive, i got it home and it will hardly start, tends to shut off when it warms up and now it's having all sorts of intermittent spark issues.

So, i saw a lot of similarities with your problems on this post and wanted to follow up.

Bad CDI? Exciter coil? Wiring at the kill switch? Bad advancer?

Thanks, hope you fixed it.

Happy riding!

[AussieATC]

I had a similar problem on my ATC200es. I cleaned some dirt of the main fuse connections and it fixed the problem straight away.

[trike savior]

its the exciter coil. as others have said ohming it like service manual might not tell whole story but the ones i have had doing the exact same thing did ohm test bad but not by much. anything outside of range set by honda is bad