The plugs don't fail as such but they do get fouled and often they are sparking against whatever you are holding them on to ground them when doing the test...but its hard to see.....yours could be the ign pick up but you save a heap of cash by doing the plugs first.

 

You can check the resistance of the primary and secondary circuits on the coil.

For primary connect leads of ohmmeter across wire terminals, impedance should be 2.5-3.1 ohms.

For secondary connect leads across plug wire towers, impedance should be 10,000-12,500 ohms.

 

Thanks all, I'm gonna pick up plugs tomorrow. Will take a look at ign pickup after that. If nothing obvious may break out the ohmmeter. Will report back, thanks again.

 

I recently replaced my ignition coil as it did the same thing your scooter is doing. Simple fix on the Softail.

 

Probably coil or sensor. I'd heat it up until it quits and hit one or the other with freeze spray (radio shack or electronics store) to narrow it down. Electronic stuff will either fail hot or fail cold, making freeze spray and a heat gun real time savers.

 

This is how I check for spark: Take a plastic handle #2 phillips screwdriver and stick the end in the end of the spark plug wire. Hold the plastic handle and bring the metal screwdriver shaft close to a ground on the motor. Crank the motor. You should see spark jumping across to the ground. No spark, ignition problem. An acceptable alternative would be to grab the metal part of the screwdriver and crank the motor. If you are thrown across the garage, ignition system is OK.

 

Lol Doc. Nice one for sure but I have an alternative method. You should just do what the cool kids do, you know the quarter-fairing crowd with the directional lights on the mirrors, notice I did not mention soa like a certain kiwi does?! Just buy those awesome lighted spark plug wires. If they light you gots iggy.

The method a la Hess is a certain trip to the e.r.

 

The Acceptable Alternative method does have a higher risk (depending on what stops you), but if you use the primary method of holding the plastic handle, the risk is minimal. I've been doing it that way for decades and I've only been to an ER, I dunno, a thousand times? See, no correlation at all. Or is that "correlation does not imply causality."

 

Buy a $ 3.00 spark tool and roll her over in the dark .
Set the spark tool to Harley plug specs. and see what color spark you have .
Should be blue/white for good coil output.

 

Update all,
Yes Doc Hess, I used the screwdriver trick (have for years on small engines) and no spark. Always makes me nervous though, hate getting shocked! Came home today and decided to put old plugs in so that if it decided to start after cooling completely off I would know it wasnt plugs, well it didnt fire at all. Definitely have gas and compression (thumb test).

Went to coil next, its an aftermarket coil, a Dyna 5.0 ohm. Measured across the posts it has 5.1 ohms of resistance. Measured across the plug wire towers it has 17K ohms.

I found an old coil in the box of misc parts I got with bike, looks like it might be the OEM coil. It measures 3.8 ohms across posts and 11.5K ohms across towers.

Thoughts on the coil(s)?

I also checked the ignition pickup under the plate, I didnt see any 'black goo' that was mentioned in an earlier post. Should I go ahead and replace the ignition pickup?

Thanks all! Help has been great.