ok. on my sportsman 400 2 stroke i finaly got it fixed where it will not use so much gas.all it was was the choke cable was not adjusted right. now i went to crank it up friday and it would not crank. i removed the air box lid and it fired up. put lid back on and it will not do anything. i tried everthing i could think of and nothing. changed spark plug, nothing. i loosened the cabel at the throtel housing and it fired up. it started about 3 times. then nothing again. i have tried for 2 days now and nothing. i took coil off today and put it on another bike and it stared with no problem. it is getting spark and then it will quite for awhile. i checked the ground and all the wires and doing the same thing. i do not have the etc switch hooked up. i need help bad. from what i have been reading it is either the cdi or the stator. i have not been in any water since i got my new motor in 4 weeks ago.

 

Hail Maximus,

I had the same problem with my neighbor's 425 Magnum. I found out that the problem was that he stuffed the airbox snorkle with the foam prefilter and the foam that is supposed to hold the snorkle in place. It would run O.K. with the airbox lid off, but not with the lid on. You wouldn't perchance have any "critters" building nests in the airbox snorkle by any chance would you?

The way to check the machine to make sure if you are getting spark is simple. Remove the spark plug from the machine, insert it into the spark plug cap and ground the plug. Then crank the motor over. You should see a nice bright blue spark between the electrodes (assuming that the plug isn't fouled with gas and oil). It should be consistant and fire every upstroke of the piston. Also while the plug is out, check your compression. Stick your finger over the spark plug hole. Everytime the piston nears the top, you should have your finger pushed off the spark plug hole.

If it still won't start, and /or the spark is inconsistant take it to your dealer. Something is wrong with either the stator or the pick up for the CDI.

 

Mike,

I am a friend of Maximus, and we worked on it Saturday evening trying to get it running for our night ride. To rule out the possibility of a bad spark plug, I put a screwdriver in the cap..........inside my hand, with my hand grounded on the head. Out of several different attempts to get spark, it jolted my hand once. We even trimmed off about a half inch of spark plug wire on each end trying to rule out a bad wire connection. Now he's saying that the coil worked on another bike. I remember MEANGREENMACHINE having a similar problem, and it turned out that the bolts holding the stator on had backed out, and the stator was turning with the flywheel. This ended up cutting the wires that leave the stator as well as the pulse generator. The only thing I don't understand is that he tested for a pulse, and it is getting one. The air box thing isn't relevant since there is no spark.

 

walexa,



<< i removed the air box lid and it fired up. put lid back on and it will not do anything. >>



Oops, my bad.

I would carefully trace the wires from the stator to the coil including the exciter/pulse wire. If you are getting intermittant spark there could be only two causes, the system is grounded somewhere, or the CDI could also be bad too. I've had that happen once. Test the CDI box out on a friends machine. If it refuses to run, then there is your problem. If you are getting jolted at least once, I doubt if it is the stator spinning as in MGM's machine. If that were the case, you would get no spark at all.

 

Sence you have only had the engine for a month,I would ck the main wire conector coming from the stater.Also ck the engine ground bolted to the top of the head.Good luck

 

i checked the wires from the stator and theh are all good and tight. i talked to rick he said it was the primary coil.

 

ok. i did a test with a dc volt meter and not getting a reading for the pulse coil. so i guess i found the problem