2008 Coil Failure

borntoride63

Supercharged
Joined
Mar 28, 2009
Messages
223
Location
pennsylavania
anyone had a problem with the coils going bad? I have a 2008 standard, Jardine, 3 K&Ns, claw cut out, tuneboy, last summer at about 3000 miles the front coil went bad! now Im guessing its one of the other two! my dealer is very busy, and its scheduled for next tuesday! it breaks up bad around 5300 RPM, anyone know how to test! coils to see if there bad? my dealer does the trial and error method till they find the bad one! was wondering if triumph got a bad batch of coils in 08!
 
mmm...never heard of this one. Maybe you could pull the coil wires, squeeze the connector lightly to make it tighter, grease and reinstall. That might help and save you some trouble.
 
Yeah, if it's not setting a trouble code those are tough to diagnose. Having individual coils and two plugs per cyl make it difficult to narrow down the culprit. Like Dragger said, wires and connections are more likely to be the failure than a coil. Check the small things first.
 
all is tight guys! the first coil up front! was bad and replaced end of last year! so now I think its #2 or # 3 if there is a lemon in the lineup guess who always gets it? :) wish MSD made coils for the Rocket!


Yeah, if it's not setting a trouble code those are tough to diagnose. Having individual coils and two plugs per cyl make it difficult to narrow down the culprit. Like Dragger said, wires and connections are more likely to be the failure than a coil. Check the small things first.
 
i have seen a simple coil test setup
it baisicaly
has a small box made of plastic or wood about 2 in id
a nail (earthed to motor) driven into the box to the center
and screw long enough to touch the nail, screwed into the box from the oposite side
the screw is hoked up to the H/T lead

to operate start with a small 2mm gap and progresivly open the screw untill a spark wont jump the gap probably 7mm+
this should be compared to all leads on all coils and any low preformers replaced

another setup had 2 counters
one counted the number of times a coil was activated
and the other counted the no of sparks outputed
any discrepancy over 1/1000,000 ment the coil was sad

dont know how the counters were hoked up
 
One problem diagnosing coils is that they will work and spark just fine without the cylinder compression, then when forced to jump the gap under operating conditions it won't take the pressure. Thats why I miss the old sun machines with the oscilloscope display, you could tell so much about whats going on with the primary and secondary ignition with one. You could watch the points open and close, the coil charge and the capacitor doing it's thing (that shows my age). Now days the ECM is supposed to tell you what and where to look, thing is though .... ECM's won't tattle on themselvs. The shop will plug in a new one to test it, but we don't have a parts counter in our house (the wife would argue that I do). lol
 
The dealer should be able to sort this out quickly.


Hellfire is correct about testing ignition systems and parts. Testing on a bench without a pressure chamber does not stress the system, and does not tell you how the system operates under chamber pressures. Firing across an air gap is not like firing under pressure - especially once the air at the spark becomes ionozed. And you really need to use an ocilliscope to see how each part of the system is operating.

The quick/easy way to determine which cylinder is misfiring is to put the bike on a test stand or dyno and use an IR thermometer or thermocouple on the exhaust header primaries. Once the load exceeds the coil's ability to fire the plugs, the offending cylinder will show an immediate drop in temps when raw fuel/air is pumped into the exhaust.
 
It's rare to find an ocilliscope in a modern shop nowdays, and if you do ... it was probably built in the '70's, 7 feet tall, stored in the warranty parts hold room, covered with an inch of dust and the only guy that knows how to turn it on has grey hair. lol;)
 
I have a couple fo old CRT scopes - antiques today. Most good tuning shops use modern electronic scopes, or laptops with scope software like PicoScope. Much improved over the old stuff, and they log accurately with more speed.
PicoScope Oscilloscope Software - the standard in PC Oscilloscope software

Pretty common today for advanced engine management. I can't imagine not having a good scope for many uses, especially setting and testing coil dwell, injector status, smart-coils, etc.
 
Back
Top