XRayHound

Was playing around with it some more tonight, got it running with MUCH effort, to discover it had switched sides, again. The right cylinder was now the strong one. Kept fiddling with it, tried some of my other coils on the left side (the one that was on it checked high on secondary resistance, both my spares checked good) to no result... until the bike finally got warm and lo and behold both cylinders were firing. I took it for a short ride to blow it out and burn the residue off the plug on the side that wasn't firing... before I got back to the driveway, it had switched sides AGAIN and the right cylinder was gone. Will check the pickup coil resistance later as per pault's advice, but the side swapping has me completely mystified. Also, the hovering spark plug wire boot trick has stopped working. I'm almost ready to take back my assertion that it isn't carburetion, because there IS spark ALWAYS. But I don't get how the carburetors could spontaneously just decide to take swing shifts, either. They both work or one works but they never BOTH give it up. Halp.

pault: Thanks, I'll check that. Drewpy: Thanks for the insight, I did replace the coil but there's no telling if it was any better than the last. I'll check the resistances on all of them. I would follow through with more of your advice, but I've got the breakerless ignition. I really hope that bit isn't screwed up. Oldgit: Will do. Thanks all.

I'm having the same problem as Special Man. It is NOT in the carbs. Here's my story: I rebuilt the carbs, set the valves, sync'd the carbs, everything was nice. It started easy, ran good. Let it sit for awhile since I had accomplished what I set out to do. When I next try to start it, no joy. Nothing works. I get it running with brake cleaner and notice the right pipe is cold. Pull the plug wire, it's still loping along, nothing changes. Here's the goofy part: if I pull the wire off and hold it way off the plug, to where the spark is arcing to the plug, the cylinder fires and the bike runs great! I figured this was a bad wire, so I swapped in an extra wire I had. No change. After I caught onto the pulling the boot halfway off making it fire thing, I swapped the plugs side to side, and sure enough it moved to the left cylinder. Two new NGK plugs later and after a short period of running well it's back in the right cylinder. I'm stumped.