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V-strom-1000 ignition issue

11K views 16 replies 9 participants last post by  Toto13 
#1 ·
I am new to the forum and tried to find my specific problem in the many postings. Did not find the final answer but may have overlooked it. Bought half yr ago an 03 V-strom 1000. (with just over 100K kilometers) Had a “good” deal as the bike needed lot of maintenance and new tires/chain etc. Paid CAD 1,800 so have some room to work. Bike made lots of noise in the clutch area and yes indeed that one had too much play. Got it fixed in a very professional manner by WERKS PARTS USA (bushings etc ) When riding bike first time noticed a lot of hesitation and cutting out fuel supply or ignition. Cleaned the injectors, new filter, plugs and re-connected all electrical connections. Did not help, but found out with my stroboscope that the rear ignition coil fired constantly and front one not even 10% of time. Only when trying to rev up, more pulses came visible. Replaced the ignition coil assembly without any improvement. Measured resistance value and was at 3.9 Ohm (OK) As the crank position sensor and the CKP sensor are used for all of the ignition (and injectors) and the rear cylinder runs fine I blamed it to a faulty CDI. Bought one on ebay from a “wrecked “ 2003 bike. Installed and unfortunately without any result. With the strobe I can see the very intermittent firing of the front cylinder coil. Anyone with additional ideas to go from here ?
 
#2 ·
Is the front cylinder ignition coil not firing, or is the spark bypassing the spark plug wire? An old trick is to observe it running in a dark room and look/listen for spark jumping to ground instead of going to the spark plug. I would put a known good spark plug in the spark plug cap ( leave the plug in the front cylinder for the test ) and see if I could get it running enough to observe the spark from a good plug. If you can get consistent spark, then if it isn't running right there are other problems.
 
#3 ·
I was thinking the same thing, but as the new coil comes with the spark plug wire entact, that only leaves the plug cap ass, boot or plug at fault. If these test good, the coil exciter wire could be problematic. Is the bike throwing any codes?
 
#4 ·
Sometimes a crimp connection in the wiring harness can get water in it and corrode. Salt water from snow treatment is even worse. Both coils get their power from crimp connections to the ignition power wire which is orange with a white stripe. The front coil's connection wire is black with an orange stripe and the rear coil's wire is orange with a white stripe. You could put a jumper wire between the B/O wire on the front coil and the O/W wire on the rear coil or even jump both to the O/W wire on the ECM to bypass all crimp connectors for the coils. See if that does the job.
 
#5 ·
I replaced the coil, its cable, cap and plug itself. So I cancelled out that option. For sure I should try to remove the cable from the plug and hook up to spare plug, outside the engine. Making sure the cable can nowhere jump the iginition pulse. Than hookup my stroboscope and see with very short running on the rear cylinder only if at least I can get a constant firing on this external routed plug.
 
#7 ·
Last couple of days I was back from a business trip and finally could work on the bike again. Measured wiring for resistance and grounding leak. Than bypassed the wires to the coils. Tapped in near to the ECM. Last thing I did today is hooking up a (new) timing light to see again the difference between front and rear firing. Rear firing is consistent, front ignition fires almost never. Now comes the odd thing. after only running the bike for 10 seconds to see the timing light detecting and flashing the front exhaust was hotter than the rear pipe !! (tested with the infra red scanner) 185 degrees in 10 seconds and no visible firing. I worked with bikes over the past 40 years and this bike is my 33rd one. Tomorrow following up and one of the advises to hook-up a plug with the ignition wire spaced of from the frame. Looks indeed like "leaking" sparks.
 
#8 ·
Sounds like you could be near the end of a fruitless path. I work on bikes also and sometimes I get an idea an develop tunnel vision. I could be wrong but maybe the fuel pump is toast and restricting fuel flow. I see you did the filter....I assume you mean fuel filter. Was the strainer clean also at the base of the filter.

I am not discounting your original idea only offering a second. My 2007 bike also required a remap of the ECU to get it to fuel properly without hesitation in the mid 3000 to 4000 rpm range.
 
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#9 ·
Thank you again for the reponses with ideas. Last Saturday I encountered the situation I do not understand and have never had ever before. Removed the front cylinder ignition plug. Hooked it up to spark plug outside the engine. Clamped the spark plug to the frame to have good grounding and kept the cable as good as possible way from any engine/frame part. Started up the engine (of course only running on rear cylinder) Spark plug was firing regular and strong. Hooked up the timing light to see if the strobe was consistent as well. NO STROBE AT ALL Hooked the timing light over the nr 1 ignition cable and have a solid strobe, so timing light good working. Tested few times forth and back with same odd result.
How is it possible to see the spark plug firing and the timing light not picking up from that cable. I know I found the problem of my bike, just have no clue to fix it, nor have any understanding of this. Will check with my race friends as well, as maybe, maybe someone can shine a light on this !
 
#10 ·
That is simply a problem with your timing light not picking up the spark going through the spark plug wire. I have had them do that. I also have a timing light ( has not been used in over 20 years easily....) that you put the lead between the wire and the plug. That one always registers the spark!
 
#11 ·
Its a new 190 dollar timing light (I also had an older one with damaged wires and a crack) It works perfect on the rear ignition cable but not on the front. Swapped couple of times to make sure I am not crazy.
But yeh, maybe the "old" technology of in-line testing will do a better job. For the monent I am leaving the ignition "problem" as is and focus again on the fuel delivery
 
#12 ·
Just been reading a long story on the website for jeeps, where a guy had similar problems in 2012. Also a timing light that did not pick-up on one cylinder only and worked perfect on other cylinders. After all the problem was the ignition coils itself that produced a weak signal. Just enough to run the engine, not enough to run good and =barely enough to trigger the timing light. I swapped already my coils for other "used" ones of ebay, but now I am going to try a set of 3 Ohm Dyna coils an see what happens. Will post the result.
 
#13 ·
Inductive timing light tech became standardized in the days of distributed, super high voltage coils. My old Craftsman timing light doesn't work for the front spark plug wire on my K2. Doesn't work reliably for an Outboard engine either, DAMHIK.

Have you checked exhaust valve clearance? The intakes haven't changed on my 2002 DL1000 in over 50K miles but the exhaust clearance seems to narrow significantly every 25K.

Your report of a hot exhaust pipe in 10 seconds of running time suggests the fuel is burning in the pipe instead of the cylinder.

Got compression?
 
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