Have you replace a coil on your RSV?

[gunboat]

when i bought my '99 m/t trike i was using a lot of gas. i thought it was because of it bing a trike. but found a dead left rear (#1 ) coil. replaced the coil and still had the problem. it turned out to be a bad tci unit.

reguards

don c.

[V7Goose]

Resurrecting an old, but relevant thread in search of an answer. 2006 2nd Gen. 67000 miles. Been riding on 3 cylinders for about a month (began coincidentally while at Maintenance Day). Mileage went down the toilet and top end power was lousy. Smelled gas all the time. Muffinman helped me a few weeks ago with a color tune (and air filters, radiator flush, oil change, clutch disk change) and we discovered left rear cylinder had no spark. Ordered a new coil which arrived yesterday. Installed it today, and it sparks, but as the engine warms up, there is a lot of smoke coming from the exhaust at the connection about 3 inches from the cylinder where the first clamp attaches. Smells a little like melting rubber or plastic. No obvious wires or tubes resting on the pipes. Afraid something is going to catch fire.

 

Anyone experience this before? Thought maybe a month of unburned fuel/air mixture in the pipes might need to burn off or something, is this normal? Is there a danger of fuel residue in the first few inches of the exhaust catching fire? I'm nervous about riding it.

 

Thanks

 

David

You talk about smoke from the exhaust about three inches from the cylinder - I assume you mean coming off the pipe near the battery cover? There is a gasket under that clamp where the Y pipe connects to the header flange, so if it is there and the clamp is tight, any smoke in that area has to be coming from something burning on the outside of the pipe. Even on the very unlikely chance that the gasket is missing, you would not be seeing smoke there unless there was so much smoke coming out the tail pipe that you couldn't see the back of the bike!

 

It is certainly very possible that something has gotten lodged under the chrome heat shield. I suggest you simply remove the Y pipe and inspect it - it is very simple to do.

 

On an unrelated note to the smoke, I have found that coils very rarely go bad - it is usually just the plug cap. Did you replace both the coil and the cap, or just the coil? Would you be willing to send me the old coil for testing? I'll be happy to send you the $5 postage for a priority mail envelope.

Goose

[N3FOL]

I had just replaced my plugs for the 3rd time at 24K miles 2 days ago and all four plugs appear to have the same expected color at the firing end of each plug. This is a good heads up and will always keep in mind about the condition of my coils down the road. FWIW, my mpg is averaging between 39 to 41 mpg.

[Kirby]

Has anyone of you that have had a coil go bad seen any evidence of the coil itself cracking? Several years ago one of the coils on my 99 VMAX cracked and after doing a good bit of research on various Vmax websites, I found out that this was happening to a lot of Vmaxes. Anyway, the bike would run fine until it got wet, whether in the rain or washing. After it dried off it would run fine again. I'm not suggesting this is the case here, but it just put me in remembrance of that incidence. A used coil from Pinwall solved that problem.

[N3FOL]

Curious on this end, what part of the VMax coil would crack?

[MikeWa]

One way you can test for a bad coil is with a timing light. Connect it to the plug wires one at a time. If it doesn't work on one cylinder or it is probably bad.

Mike

[jfoster]

Since this is such a common problem...what if I installed the lighted spark plug caps? That way at a glance I would instantly know if they were all firing at any time or condition. Has anyone ever installed these and are they reliable. Jp cycles part #3800382.

Edited July 3, 2011 by jfoster

[allwx]

I've put just over 100k miles on two of these machines, the first a 97 RSTD, the second a 07 Venture, and have never had any problem with coils, or any other part of the ignition.

 

It does seem odd that so many of the coil failures have been on #3, and I will certainly keep an eye out for it.

 

Good info, thanks.

[Kirby]

Curious on this end, what part of the VMax coil would crack?

 

 

In answer to your question, it was the actual body of the coil. The plastic housing itself. Granted these coils are different from the ones on the 2nd Gen, but I was just curious. Pic. 1. has the crack along the top of the case. 2. another crack along the right end of the plastic case. 3. crack along the edge nearest your view and along the righthand end of the coil casing.

[Venturing Sole]

You talk about smoke from the exhaust about three inches from the cylinder - I assume you mean coming off the pipe near the battery cover? There is a gasket under that clamp where the Y pipe connects to the header flange, so if it is there and the clamp is tight, any smoke in that area has to be coming from something burning on the outside of the pipe. Even on the very unlikely chance that the gasket is missing, you would not be seeing smoke there unless there was so much smoke coming out the tail pipe that you couldn't see the back of the bike!

 

It is certainly very possible that something has gotten lodged under the chrome heat shield. I suggest you simply remove the Y pipe and inspect it - it is very simple to do.

 

On an unrelated note to the smoke, I have found that coils very rarely go bad - it is usually just the plug cap. Did you replace both the coil and the cap, or just the coil? Would you be willing to send me the old coil for testing? I'll be happy to send you the $5 postage for a priority mail envelope.

Goose

 

Thanks Goose. Searched quite a few threads previous to my post and saw that the coil may not actually be bad, but as I had the new one in hand, I opted to use it anyway. Cleaned the mounting posts with sandpaper and put a little dielectric grease on them prior to assembly. Reused the plug boot.

 

The smoke was coming from the place you described, in front of the battery cover where the Y-pipe connects to the header flange. Used a mirror to look under the chrome pipe cover, but saw nothing lodged in there. Took the bike for a ride on my street to see if the smoke would go away (by the way, only a trace of smoke coming from the muffler). After 15 minutes of riding (sometimes gentle and sometimes goosing the throttle), the smoke began to come and go and after about 30 minutes, no trace of smoke. Bike seems to have more power...will find out this week during commute if my gas mileage improves.

 

Be happy to send you the coil for testing. PM me your address. I'll cover sending to you if you'll cover sending back if the coil is still serviceable. If the coil is bad, trash it.

 

Thanks again. Was hoping you'd see this one.

 

David

[HGWT]

I had to replace the coils on my 2000 MM this year.