I've been told by numerious mechs. that the problem that I'm having with my 96 shee not firing up is that my CDI is going south on me.

Seems that it wants to turn over when it's stone cold for the first ride of the day but when it gets to operating temp it would be easier to turn over a dead body than get my bike to start.

I just went and had over 400$ worth of clutch side work done to this thing and still it wont kick over.

I went the extra mile and bought a new Procom CDI box for the 97-06 model, due to the 96 model CDI is so hard to come by, and the only diff is that it has one extra wire coming out of it (green with yellow stripe).

I looked through my manual and found out that this wire goes to some parking switch.

I guess to get to the point...... has anybody modified this particular CDI to work with the 96 harness? And if it worked for you what did you have to do to get it to work?

If anybody has ANY ideas of maybe what else might be going bad that would be causing this problem please feel free to give the info. Any info will be looked at in great detail.

I'm on my last nerve with this problem and need some sound advice before I find the nearest sledgehammer and fix the problem myself.

 

So if I understand correctly..........You installed the CDI with the extra wire, and it still wont fire?

If this is true, what are you doing with the extra wire? If you just taped it up, are you sure it doesn't need to be grounded; Or the other way around..........I dont know how that switch works on the 97-06 model

 

I've tried to start it with that wire grounded and ungrounded.

The wires coming out of the CDI match up exactly to the wiring harness with the diff of the green/yellow wire.
I took the plug off the old CDI and re-wired it so that all the wires matched from the wiring harness to the CDI.

Something in the back of my mind keeps telling me that I should focus on the coil.
But I've always been told that coils don't gradually go bad. When they go bad it's totally dead.
Is this true or am I just being the target of someones stupidness?

 

My experience has been the cdis dont come and go. They usually just fail, and never work again.
Usually when a quad wont fire up hot, but seems good when cold, is the pick up coil and stator. Sometimes the cast stator, developes a crack, and when the stator gets hot, the gap of the crack, disturbs the electrical field, and makes for a weak or non existant spark.
Next time its tough to start hot, try checking the out put of the pick up coil
Have you gotten the motor to fire up, using the new cdi? If you put the old one back in..will it fire up then?

 

definitly doesnt sound like an eletrical problem. I would go with hondabuster and say it would be something mechanical. When CDI's fail they dont work at all just like he said.

 

When I got the CDI in the mail the first thing I had to do is wire in the old plugs off of the old CDI so that the new one would plug into the harness.

The only wire that had no place to go was the green with yellow stripe wire. So I left that wire hanging all by itself unconnected to anything.

After about 30 min. of trying to kick it over I finally tried to ground the wire but the bike still didn't want to turn over.

Finally got tired of kicking on it so I decided to wire in the old CDI. Once I got the old one plugged back in there was a deffinate starting difference.
The bike seemed to make an effort to start but would never fully get going.

This is everythng that exactllyhappened from the time I got the new CDI to the time I finally got fed up with it and put the bike away.

If you can, please diagnose what the problem might be. If you have no clue then PLEASE ask around to friends that might be able to help.

If I can't get this rectified I might have to get rid of the bike.

 

WHOA THERE!!! Ok dont give up just yet...I dont have a banshee but its prolly your throttle electrical system....look it up, and that may be the problem...idk if you already know but there is some kind of bug wire on the stupid throttle and that could mess you up. just a suggestion though.

 

This may not do you any good but never-the-less here goes. Ever since I got into Banshees 3 years ago I have seen that most all of Bansh electrical problems are due to malfunction of the TORS system (throttle override system) which prevents engine reving up if throttle is not engaged or if clutch is pulled in. The safety with TORS is not worth the loss in reliability. So if you have not dissconnected TORS then you should consider this as a first step even though your intermittant running does sound like something unrelated to TORS.
The real hard core Banshee fans often hang out at BansheeHQ and they may have some other ideas.

 

I'm wondering if the guy who owned the bike before me might have screwed up something in the wiring harness when he was getting rid of components.

There is no longer any T.O.R.S. system to speak of on the bike. It is now running toomey carb tops.

Also there is no longer the use of a key switch to start up the bike.