As I said before I've never disassembled one of these dual cylinder 6 pin CDIs. But I expect that they are similar in design to the single output CDIs (which I have disassembled and traced out) but with only one output to a single coil. The single cylinder CDI is pretty bulletproof. With one exception I don't see any way that external problems on AC powered CDs can damage CDIs over hours. I can see ways to blow up a CDI instantly on turn on (with massively wrong wiring), but not failing after working several hours. The one exception: A bad ignition coil that arcs back from the high voltage secondary winding to the primary winding instead of jumping across the plug gap. This would take out one of the two CDI outputs. But you said both cylinders don't have spark.


No.

 

[quote=mudmike;3156136...There are no functioning lights or safey switches (all have been bypassed) anywhere on my quad and save for the neural light the dash is useless. May take me a bit to figure out the neural light (not a circut im fimiliar with but is one I'd like to keep) but I could rewire the quad to start and run (and turn off) from scratch in a couple hrs. My question is if I did all that work would my cdi last?[/quote]

I've been looking around for official wiring diagrams of the dual output CDI quads. I haven't found any. But I have some hand drawn ones that look credible. Do you have a meter? Perhaps we can measure all the inputs to the CDI and see how kosher they are, then plug in one or more of your dead CDIs and see if we can see what's not happening. If you're willing to go down that route I'll start coming up with a test plan.

 

As I said before I've never disassembled one of these dual cylinder 6 pin CDIs.

I think mine would work the same as a single it only has one coil wire from cdi that 'Y's into the coils. Wonder if is just too much load creating heat and slowly killing them over time? My redneck shade tree trained eye (mostly cars) just doesn't see anything other than the coils putting load on this simple circut. The 2 pin side has AC in to power the unit. The kill switch which to my understanding is a ground and you open the circut to make the bike run (no load there). The 4 pin side the bottom 2 (assuming looking at it with 2 pin vertical on right) are ground (no load there either). I'm not looking so these may be backwards but top left is pickup pulse in. and the right one goes to the coils (load of 2 where 1 should be?) kinda like powering a 1500watt amp with tiny unfused speaker wire it will work for a few minutes but then the wire burns up.

 

Well I'm totally confused.

Dual cylinder CDI's don't have a single output that "Y"s into two coils. They have dual outputs that have each output wire into a separate coil. When I asked before where you were getting you CDI's from I was assuming that you were getting the legit dual output CDIs. But now I'm totally back to square one.

What CDIs have you been buying? Dual output CDIs are expensive. What did you pay? CAn you send me links where you bought these 4 CDIs?

Are they just the generic single output $10 CDIs from ebay?

Are you sure your CDI "Y"s the two coils into a single output?

 

Man I feel stupid. Monday I found one of my old cdi boxes was checking inputs and gonna put it on the quad to see what changed. I think the true problem finally showed itsef and was corrected. I was testing AC to the cdi for the 7,956th time when I noticed the current was intermittent. Tracing the wire to the quick disconnect I finally looked close enough to see the corrosion where the wire meets the connector. After cleaning and resoddering I tried the 'dead' cdi and wow it had came back to life too. Been playing all week no more problems. Stupid wire. Guess I was jiggling it while changing cdi's? Oh well guess I got a spare cdi now. Thanks for your help Lynn.

Now lets see if I can fight the urge to ride long enough to get my carb right today.

 

I'm glad you got it working . I'm still real curious about the "y" split from the CDI driving two ignition coils. Is this really true? If so, does this look like a hack to the wiring, or factory installed? I'm really interested if this is a long term viable patch for making a dual cylinder quad to run off a single cylinder (cheap) CDI...

 

Tell you what next nice day i'm not working (suns barly up when I leave and dark when I come home) I'll pull the front plastics completely off instead of loose when I yank my 'now pouring gas out the overflow' carb off (guess who took their quad to the lake instead of fixing it today lol) Then I can really see that wiring (kinda in a tight space to see but easy to reach everything with plastics loose) to be 100% sure if it has a 'Y' in it then I'll report back. May be 2maro may be after first of year.