I had an 05 Mule 3000 come in. The initial complaint was that it would idle, but if you give it gas it would die. They replaced a fuel pump and now it won't start.

There was no spark when I got it, so I tracked down a defective fuel pump relay, CDI, ignition switch and one of the ignition coils. The pulse coil (crankshaft sensor) reads right at 130 Ω and with a Peak Voltage Adapter is putting out between 3.5 and 4vdc. The ignition coils (now) both read between 1.9 and 2.6 Ω on the primaries and about 12kΩ on the secondaries. The CDI has 12v on the grey and brown leads with ground on the black/yellow. All of the wires to and from the CDI pin out fine as far as I can tell.

What I am getting now, though is a single spark when you first spin the engine over and either one or two sparks when you stop spinning it over. The Peak Voltage on the ignition coil primary reads 10vdc as soon as you hit the starter and continues to drop until you release the starter, at which point it jumps up to 10vdc again for just a second.

I know that the brand new CDI from PartsShark CAN be defective, but I am looking for anything else that I might have over looked. The last time I saw this was on an ATV that had bad connections to the CDI, but that isn't (doesn't seem to be) the case here.

Any help or advice would be GREATLY appreciated! `

 

We have the information you seek on the ATV Connection homepage, here:

https://atvconnection.com/articles/a...e-not-kicking/

 

Hey there. I appreciate the information. I've done some further diagnostics on this since the question was posed. First, to answer your question, I did do tests on the stator and pulse coil windings. All of those checked out.

So, since I posted this, I physically removed the original CDI from the mule. Up until this point, I had only been unplugging it and plugging the new one in. Once I removed the old one, I found a physical piece blown out of the module. So it was definitely bad. The rear ignition coil had a similar blown section.

Kawasaki/PartShark sent me a second module. With the original CDI, I had NO spark at all. With the replacement, I had one spark when you first engaged the starter and a second, single spark when you released the key. With the second CDI I was sent, I got a single, faint spark when you first turn the key to the ON position and nothing at all when you are spinning the starter over.

I even took EVERYTHING loose from the wiring harness and wired ONLY the components necessary to fire the plugs using my own individual wires. Still only got the faint initial spark with nothing while turning the engine over. That DEFINITELY wasn't right.

At this point, I was set to go on Christmas vacation, which was three weeks. After a few back and forths with PartShark, the are sending me a third module. The guy was nice enough to set it aside until I got back and I got a tracking number the other day showing that it is set to arrive on my first day back. I cannot say enough about their support! I have a dealer account with them, but still... this is above and beyond anything I would expect.

Having said all of that, since I have gotten two different results from two different CDI modules, I am PRAYING that this is a case where third time REALLY is the charm! Once I get this and get it installed, I will for sure report back... hopefully with success! Thank you so much for your time and attention.

 

I had the same issue with my mule 1 spark when turning ignition on , problem ended up being the brand new ignition switch I ordered had the wrong resistor on the back where the wires go into the switch you will see it connected to the grey wire and one other post .. it wasn’t letting enough current through pretty sure old switch had a 100 while new broken switch had a 1000 in there way too much resistance hope this helps