Home Early due to Lack of Spark

 Thursday, June 27

I did a little bit of target shooting in the morning along with more policing up of spent brass left by inconsiderate shooters.

Then, in the afternoon, I had been pootling around with Yagi, my TW200, down forest trails when she suddenly stopped running.

Hmmm.  I thought perhaps I'd run out of gas though the tripmeter was telling me otherwise.

Yagi would crank and crank but the engine would not "catch".

Much diagnosing later, and with the help via phone with Chris Z., it was determined there was "no spark".  You need three things for an engine to run: Air, Fuel and Spark.   I'd confirmed the first two and Chris Z. helped me confirm the lack of the third.

Chris Z. walked me through grounding the spark plug on a metal ground to see if a spark would arc between the electrode on the spark plug and the ground metal chosen.  Nothing.

Of course, this all happened about a mile down a rather narrow and hilly trail.  I couldn't push the motorcycle up even the first incline.  I called Jeremiah P., a neighborhood friend and handy guy and he immediately agreed to come help recover Yagi.

I walked back to camp, which was perhaps a quarter mile further than where I had to abandon Yagi.  Say about 1.5 miles?  At camp, I waited the 2.5 hrs it took for Jeremiah and his lovely wife Stacy to arrive.

They drove their Ford Super Duty Truck with a winch in the bed and we proceeded to drive to where Yagi waited.  I don't think the Honda CR-V, which I'd previously entertained going to get along with trailer, would have avoided grounding on some of the holes in the trail.

Jeremiah's truck did fine as it has higher ground clearance and 4WD.  We got to Yagi and in less than 10 minutes she was being tied down in the bed of the pickup truck!  

Back to camp, we unloaded Yagi from Jeremiah's truck and then he helped me get Yagi onto the cargo rack at the front of the VRRV.  Rescue complete!

I said my thanks and goodbyes to Jeremiah and Stacy and they left me to spend one more night at the campsite.

I would wake up the next morning, did some more diagnosing and troubleshooting and realized it was either the ignition coil or the CDI module (which controls the spark generation).

I packed things up at that point and by 9:30 I was on the road back to the cesspool that is Metro Denver.

Presently awaiting delivery of an ignition coil, hoping that's the issue since it's the cheaper replacement part, if not it'll be the $100 or so CDI Module from Ebay.