I have 1991 350L 4x4 which has been a tank until now. Unloaded it the other day, it started fine and imediately the head lights blew and 100 yards later it dies and has no fire. My Clymer book says to check the electical and if not within in spec., replace. Nothing matches the the spec. sheet my primary coil is .5-.6 the book says .3, my coil secondary is 5.6, the book says 6.3, my stator is 113.7 and the book says 120. The rectifier and CDI box (which are not checkable according to the book)are expensive to just replace, with no aftermarkets that I can find. Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

The readings listed in the book are +or- 10%. If your meter is out of calibration by just 0.2 ohms then you are within spec. It is safe to say your ignition coil is good, but you need to check the spark plug cap.

You have one reading for the stator, but the stator is made up of several parts; charge coil, pulse coil, and lighting coils.

The lighting coils are wired to the rectifier/voltage regulator with three wires that are color coded the same. These wires will all have a specified resistance between each of them (that is three separate readings/tests) and none of them will have contiunity to ground (three more readings/tests).

The charge coil charge the capacitor in the CDI. This coil will also have a specified resistance and no continuity to ground (that is two more tests)

The pulse coil tells the CDI when to fire the spark plug. This coil will also have a specified resistance and no continuity to ground (that is two more tests)

As you can see you have many more tests to do on the stator before it can be eliminated as the cause of your problem. Your dealer should be able to supply all these spec numbers if your manual does not have them.

Did you have a good battery in the machine when it quite? If not then the rectifier/voltage regulator and/or stator are suspect and to a lessor extent the cdi. If the battery is good then I would be checking fuses, the ignition switch, and the kill switch. If there was no battery connected then the rectifier/voltage regulator, cdi and stator may all be shot.

The rectifier can be checked if you can get the unit running and you know the stator is good. The cdi is replaced when everything else (including stator, ignition coil, switches, fuses and wires) checks out.

Post the results of the all tests and I can help you deciper them, but please don't tell me you were running this without a battery.

 

Thanks for the input. I did have a battery, but it would not start the machine. About all it would do was to barely light the nuetral light when the key was turned on. It may be this week-end before I can get the other test run. I will get them posted as soon as I can. Thanks again.