bikinkawboy
New member
I'd almost bet money it's the pulsing coil (or magnetic pickup, Hall Effect sensor, crankshaft sensor, all the same thing) that I assume is on the end of the crankshaft. They are the little guys that take the place of the old style points. You'll have two of them, one for each coil. Sometimes the insulation on the internal winding breaks down and they short out. That means they don't send a tiny electrical pulse to the igniter. The igniter is nothing more than an electronic switch and it uses the pulse signal to tell it when to turn the ignition coils on or off to create a spark.
I've had a pickup that would conk out intermittently like yours and some that pooped out only after getting throughly hot. In those cases, when it quits you can take a can of compressed air (for cleaning computers), hold it upside down and spray the cold liquid onto one of the pickups. If it then starts, you know that's the one that's bad.
To check to see if the pickups are working when it quits, remove the cover, pull a plug wire from one of the coils and stick a spark plug into it and lay it on top of the engine. Turn the ignition switch on and use something like a metal flat screwdriver and momentarily touch the tiny bit of metal protruding from pickup coil. Every time you touch and remove the screwdriver, the spark plug should fire assuming you are touching the right pickup. If you try both pickups, you should figure out which one fires which ignition coil and which one is bad.
Those pickups are expensive and you may want to consider buying a used breaker plate from a salvage yard. If you do, you'll always have an extra pickup should the other one conk out.
Oh, a CDI box is different than an "igniter" (Kawasaki's name for their ignition control unit). A CDI box has capacitors inside that act like a tiny battery. They temporarily store a bit of juice and at the appropriate time, drain the capacitor, sending a sudden burst of energy to the ignition coil. An ordinary "igniter" simply turns the current to the ignition coil on or off. Manufacturers can say what they want, but knowing how they work, I say a CDI is a way to encourage an otherwise weak ignition coil to produce a healthy spark. A decently powerful coil can deliver the same spark simply by the igniter turning the juice on an off.
I've had a pickup that would conk out intermittently like yours and some that pooped out only after getting throughly hot. In those cases, when it quits you can take a can of compressed air (for cleaning computers), hold it upside down and spray the cold liquid onto one of the pickups. If it then starts, you know that's the one that's bad.
To check to see if the pickups are working when it quits, remove the cover, pull a plug wire from one of the coils and stick a spark plug into it and lay it on top of the engine. Turn the ignition switch on and use something like a metal flat screwdriver and momentarily touch the tiny bit of metal protruding from pickup coil. Every time you touch and remove the screwdriver, the spark plug should fire assuming you are touching the right pickup. If you try both pickups, you should figure out which one fires which ignition coil and which one is bad.
Those pickups are expensive and you may want to consider buying a used breaker plate from a salvage yard. If you do, you'll always have an extra pickup should the other one conk out.
Oh, a CDI box is different than an "igniter" (Kawasaki's name for their ignition control unit). A CDI box has capacitors inside that act like a tiny battery. They temporarily store a bit of juice and at the appropriate time, drain the capacitor, sending a sudden burst of energy to the ignition coil. An ordinary "igniter" simply turns the current to the ignition coil on or off. Manufacturers can say what they want, but knowing how they work, I say a CDI is a way to encourage an otherwise weak ignition coil to produce a healthy spark. A decently powerful coil can deliver the same spark simply by the igniter turning the juice on an off.