Kawasaki coil issue.

[38racing]

I just worked on a friend's Kawasaki twin. It was running on right cylinder only. Left cylinder had spark with tester inline to the installed plug. Put in new plug. Nothing changed.Even shocked me when applying plastic coated alligator clip for balance test. Grounding tester directly produced spark. But when I used clip to ground the uninstalled plug there was no spark across plug gap. Same thing on right side showed spark. I didn't have my compression gauge so we even pulled valve cover to ensure valve action was ok. So then we swapped the coils. Guess what. Left side had spark. Right side did not. My conclusion is bad coil. (Tests with kill wires off) That's with grounded uninstalled plugs. So coil is not strong enough to jump the gap. Bit puzzling since inline tester showed spark when attached to installed plug. An internally shorted plug would do that but our final testing was with new plugs on both sides. I know coil may spark to ground but not jump a gap under compression. I expect same goes for jumping gap with no compression. Just puzzled that tester showed spark IIRC on a new plug.

[KE4AVB]

Depends on the tester. Was tester a spark gap type or one of those neon glow type? I suspect you were using one those neon testers which can be fooled by low spark voltage. Any way the best tester is the Spark Gap tester set at .125" - .150" or you as did real life test by switching the coils around. Since I don't even have spark gap tester it would be the swap test.

[38racing]

Yes it was inline tester. I was using it also since I could short the metal part to ground with the alligator lead. I have the plug shape tester with the wide gap in my box but it's alligator clip is broke. I'm going to make up another clip lead and keep it always with that tester and use it more.