Atc110 stator test

[renorealtors]

Hi everyone. 1983 ACT110 I have been on this for a week now. No spark so I figured I would start at the Stator. Below are pics of what I come up with. The manual for the 110 is just impossible to follow! I checked the ohms and show spinning the motor over at at least idle speed and get the test light to light up? The yellow wire for the lights starts glowing with a low rpm and grows as you speed up the drill. The black wire takes a much faster spinning of the drill. How could the black wire put out enough at low speed to create a spark given the pull start doesn't spin it as fast as I am with the drill? I had a parts bike and pulled the flywheel and stator assembly then installed it and I am getting the same results? Could the cdi system have a capacitor to help with spark until the bike starts and is putting out voltage to run the ignition? Just can't figure this out and don't want to just replace things hoping that part is the problem. Having no luck uploading the pics so hopefully you get the idea? Thank you in advance.

[JustEnough]

I have found the biggest cause of no spark to be slight corrosion on the wire connectors. I wire brush them and if I then get spark, I go back and put dielectric grease on the male end of the connector and push it back into place. I start with the ground wire to the coil and then the stator wires. Confirming that it is a known good plug and continuity from the coil to the spark plug boot is the first thing to check.

[ps2fixer]

Ignition systems are high voltage, so lighting a light bulb up is a challenge for them (high voltage low amps, light bulbs are fairly high amp). Either case it validates you're getting some power out. An ohm test and posting the readings would be more useful though. I don't think there's specs from Honda, but comparing the reading from a known good engine is at least a good reference point.

For how the CDI works, the black wire is from the exciter coil, it puts power into the CDI and the energy is stored in a capacitor (around 80-100v at cranking speeds, you can't measure this with out a special adapter called a peak voltage tester). Once the pulse generator sends a spike (same job as points but electronic), the CDI dumps it's energy through the ignition coil which when the energy stops flowing the magnetic flux collapses and creates a massive voltage spike on the secondary winding which is what's hooked to the spark plug (4k-10k+ volts). If you're sure the exciter coil is good, next up in line would be to test the pulse generator, it normally puts out a min of 0.7v peak voltage at cranking speeds, but with common tools an ohm reading would be more useful. The gap spec is 0.3-0.4mm. If that ohms good, next would be ignition coil, primary is very low resistance, 2 ohms or less generally speaking. Secondary is in the 1000's of ohms, just from memory should be somewhere around 4k-15k ohms depending on how it's measured and the spark plug cap.

This is a pure analog system, one leg not being right can make the whole system not work. If everything tests good, then it could be a bad CDI box. The capacitor inside is the main thing that can die with age, the normal shelf life for a good brand name cap is about 20 years, these are way past that point. Besides that, the physical connector on the CDI can get cracked/broken solder joints.

All of the ohm tests at the components can be done directly at the CDI connector except the ignition coil secondary winding. It's not a bad idea to test there since you're seeing the resistance the CDI see then and if there's a difference between direct at the part and at the CDI, you know you have a connection or wiring issue.

Here's a wire diagram I made a while back. Looks like I made a mistake and forgot to label the pulse generator, it's the device left of the alternator.

https://atvmanual.com/honda/atc110/1983-atc110-wire-diagram

Another good test is to check black wire at CDI box to green wire. If there's connection there, the CDI is being told to not spark, so check your kill switch and the wiring related to it. If not then it should be fine. The kill switch can be disconnected to leave the machine in "run" mode.

Back on the spark stuff, a AA battery can generate a spark if it's voltage gets stepped up high enough, it's not a crazy amount of energy or anything, it's just very high voltage and low amps. If it was high voltage and high amps, it could kill you if you got shocked. Amps is what can kill.