2000 Legend

[Dave]

So I picked up a pretty nice Legend for a good price last week. Last owner couldn't get it running properly. I brought it home and took the carbs apart, first thing was a missing needle seat in one of the carbs. Ok, no big deal, might explain why it wont rev up any higher than idle... Get that all squared away and it still won't rev up but idles very nice. Take the rotor cover off to check and adjust the air gap on the pickup, and after that get a nice backfire and then I lose all my spark. Still cranks just fine, but no spark to the plugs. Any ideas why? I know it's kind of a long shot here since there isn't much activity on this forum anymore, but maybe? I've tried the T-rat site (ugh...)

 

[bonZa]

I would have thought if it was idling ok but wouldnt rev that is carb/fuel related, not spark
but now that you have fiddled with the pick up coil and there is no spark complicates things. from memory the air gap for the pickup should be 0.8mm, about the thickness of a credit card

 

[rbirkey]

My guess would be that if the carbs were sitting for any length of time, they still need work beyond just the one needle seat. I would take the carbs completely apart, soak them in an ultrasonic bath to clear out all the small orifices and passageways, then do a complete rebuild replacing and calibrating all the recommended carb parts. That's based on my experience with older carb'd Bonneville's that have been sitting for a year or more with gas in them.

 

[Dave]

I guess I should have said that I completely disassembled all three carbs and gave them an hour long ultrasonic bath, and when I took them apart that was when I found out about the missing seat. I had it running again and idling nice right before I lost spark. I'm wondering if it's the ignitor...

 

[Dave]

I probably should have updated this months ago, but I ended up getting the bike running just fine. The ignitor was faulty and it had at least 1 bad coil so I replaced all of it and bike runs and idles smooth. Weird thing about the ignitor, it would only run when I jumped the neutral switch relay. That made it start up and run fine but the neutral light would stay on when it was in gear. I stuck one on there from a late 90's Trident as a tester to see if that was the only issue and it then led me to the faulty coil(s).