Plugs foulingSnake - Even new plugs sometimes show infinite ohms with a 9V meter. Same for the secondary circuits in coils. Put thousands of volts across them and they work fine. There are connections in there that must corrode very slightly over time (crimped and spring connections) but work fine at high voltage.
Really? That's a new one on me for sure. I could see a high resistance reading. But this plug was a slug.
Oh well, no harm. Getting a replacement. Will check it just to see. All my other plugs, used and new showed zero ohms. Getting back to my "problem" which does not seem to be a problem at the present time, which has been the problem all along, I'm hoping the new wires did the trick. My theories here are moisture taking causing a short to ground in the secondary or in one of the condensers. Long period of time over the winter with the garage being heated often during the day might have driven out any remaining moisture and now she's happy again. If the wires were the culprit, it should not return. If it does, then I need to look elsewhere. I was reading up on coils last night because the differences in resistance I noticed between the Honda and the two other bikes made me curious. I know that resistance varies based on the application (digital vs analog vs mechanical) but learned a bit more last night. If I buy new coils that are slightly lower in resistance, the coil will produce a hotter spark. But the system will draw more current and it could be that the Honda coils are sized for the puny charging system we have. Replacement Triumph coils will fit physcially and it appears that there are few others out there that make similar coils, at least size-wise. NAPA has a coil vendor that makes powersports coils and they are tiny little things that look like lawnmower coils. I suspect they are for EI ignitions and won't work with points, or maybe won't last with points is a better statement. I was doing a search here on headlights last night and found a link to Charlie's Place. I see he has EIs for our bikes. I assume the CL77 EI still uses the mechanical advance mechanism. I need to email him to ask for details. regards, Rob First, I put that bad plug into one of the plug caps and kicked the engine. Plug sparked just fine. Checked it again and still zero conductivity. Strange.
Today, took the bike for a sprited ride in damn cold and windy conditions. Last few miles were downright unpleasant. But, had the engine at speed and signing like a bee and did a plug chop just before my driveway. It's not easy on a CL since the key is on the same side as the throttle so you have to let go to kill the engine. Not really a plug chop in the intended form. But it shed some more light on the problem. Right plug was nice tan color and no soot except a bit around the periphery of the plug thread end. Left plug has a sooty insulator and baked carbon deposits on the electrode. So, I think my oil burning issue is worse than I suspected. Here is the right(good side) plug  Here is the left (oil burning side) plug  I put a light down the plug holes on each side and saw similar results. Right piston top was clean with signs of flaking carbon. Left piston top was black. I'm going to try a D6HA in the left side to see if it helps with the deposits. Looks like I'm going to be doing a top end rebuild next winter. Will probably swap the tranny gears at the same time. I've never owned a bike that was geared as poorly as this CL. regards, Rob I put a D6HA in the left cylinder and the fouled D8HA from the left side into the right cylinder and did a short 6 or so mile run with a plug chop at the end.
D6 looks much better than the D8 did in the left cylinder. D8 in the right looks okay, but fouling was still down at the base of the insulator. Electrode looked much better. Pics show D6 on left and D8 on right.   I put a D6HA in to the right cylinder and will so how that works out. I'm starting to get the feeling that the new E10 gasoline requires a slightly hotter plug. regards, Rob D6HA plug chop resultsToday was in the 60's and it was perfect for taking the bike for a run and doing a plug chop at the end.
Put about 38 spirited miles on her and then on the straight run home, kept her loaded but in the mid-throttle range of maybe 55 mph. Killed the ignition pulled in the clutch and coasted the 100 or so yards to my house. Here are the plugs after that chop, oriented as they are in the engine. Right insulator is as white as the day I put it in. Left is sooty. But the left mixture ring looks okay. Remeber, left is the jug that just barely puffs if you rev it while sitting still.  So, I'm going run these plugs for a bit more and do another chop. I'm coming to the conclusion that I need to run a D8 in the right jug and a D6 in the left. One other observation is I still have that dry fluffy soot on the rim of both plugs. I think this is related to the gasoline we get now. I'm going to start doing plug chops on all my bikes, all of which have no running/mixture issues, just to see how they look and gather some more empirical data. If the dry soot on the rim is fuel related, I'd like to confirm that so it can be ignored in the future. And the issue with running on one jug seems to have gone away with the replacement of the plug wires (knocking on wood here). She starts on the first kick with full choke and immediate movement to no choke. Idles perfectly. I really think it might have been moisture and old wires that were causing the problem. Gotta go see my friend that dropped off the chunk of new solid core and thank him again. For those with a similar problem, I did trim the ends of the original wires and I cannot say with authority that it helped. Bike did run on 2 jugs after doing that, but then the problem came back. So, this has what has led me to believe the plug wires were the root cause. They had served their time and it was time to replace them. I guess we'll see at the upcoming Motogiro. All the issues always show up at the events, don't they? regards, Rob Thought I'd give a final follow up on the issue. First, no reoccurrence of firing on one jug since last posting. I think the new wires solved the problem.
But, I also ran D6HA plugs in the Motogiro this last weekend. About 300 miles of constant flogging of the bike and she ran like a raped ape. Only issue was idle was strange. It would idle perfectly and then for no reason die or almost die and then regain a perfect idle. Might be chunk of dirt in the carb idle circuit. But I'm leaning towards worn slides. Anyway, point of the post is to report on the D6 results. Here are pics of the plugs. Pics of the pair show right and left plug. Left is the jug that appears to burn a tiny amount of oil. But not enough to worry about. After the first day, I added about a pint and she was back to full. I forgot to check it today (had other things on my mind in the form of a 439 Indian). So nice brown plug in the pics is the right jug and black plug is the left. Note the small build up of soot on the electrode of the left plug. This is only on the front portion of the plug, opposite the attachment point of the outer electrode. I think the D6 helped cook off the oil fouling on that side. By the way, these are not plug chops, but the plugs after a 5 mile flat out run at WOT and then coming into the checkpoint and pulling my bike into the trailer.      regards, Rob Well, here it is a year later. My CL77 has sat in the shop since it returned home from the giro last May. I was immersed in my T120R restoration, getting my Indian 439 road worthy and just riding a lot and never got back to my CL77.
So, with the spring giro coming and there being a lot of seasonal and dirt roads this year, I decided the CL77 was the bike for the event, once again. I decided to pull the carbs and make sure all was well. I found a damaged carb intake insulator block with a broken o-ring and the other had the o-ring partially pinched. I started a separate thread on this in the carburetor section if you want to see details. I decided to eliminate the o-ring on the insulator block and go with paper gaskets. I put fresh, ethanol free 91 octane gas in her and she fired right up. She is very cold blooded and it ran on both cylinders, but was very finicky. I reset the floats only to realize after I put the bike back together that I used the CL72 spec of 26.5mm and need to do it again. I had lowered them a bit last year to lean it out and probably should have left them alone. A new problem has cropped up. It did it a few time during the giro. The idle gets very high. When you rev it, the idle stays high and then slowly creeps down. I know that the slides are free in the bores so I'm thinking it is either the cable routing or the cable splitter. So, that is my next to-do item. It did run a little rough when I first started it and I was wondering if my running on one cylinder was going to reappear. But so far, it has not. I suspect the new wires solved it. But I am considering picking up replacement coils to see if that makes any difference in how she runs in general. regards, Rob
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