'76 LF CDI

[guitardude081]

I went to the cabin today to visit my family.....no one was there. My uncle told me at Christmas that his '76 LF 340(616.8 miles) had no spark. I immediatley thought, "dang prestolites". I checked everything over and switched coils with some good used ones while freezing my fingers and a few other extremities off. No spark. At this point it's either stator or CDI. Being that I won't be able to get back to the cabin for a long time and didn't have any other tools besides the basic kit strewn about the garage, what are the chances that I am right to assume that he needs a new CDI. The history of this sled is that the original owner bought it brand new along with a 440 at Willey's Marine in Mcgregor, MN. Him and his wife rode them once to Bemidji and back the first weekend and had them store the 340 and maintain it until 2002 when my uncle made him an offer when we went to pick up my Spitfire. The guy had sold the 440 a year after he bought it. This sled had 374.1 miles on the ticker when we picked it up and it looked like it had never even been touched by human hands. This thing was beyond pristine. It was wearing it's original cover, and on the seat was a new unopened plastic bag with blue tool kit, manuals and taped to it, the original paperwork. To boot it started on 1 pull for 2 years after we picked it up. Ever since, it has been beaten and left to decay in corrosion corner in the garage, now it looks like every other original '76; scratches, rust, ripped seat...it's nasty. Ok, back to the point. It was brought to my attention when my old '78 LF lost spark overnight that the prestolites went bad if you looked at them wrong. I'd like to go over to the cabin this summer and quickly slap in a CDI and say wahlah there you go. Being that it lost spark when it was sitting, not running I'd assume that I could do just this. If I would have remembered my DVOM I could have ohmed out the stator and said it was the CDI for sure. I guess I'm trying to assume that the CDI has more probability to go bad vs. the stator. My alterior motive is to fix the sled and buy it in hopes of saving it from the same fate that every sled succombs to at the cabin......neglect and misuse. My Trailfire sat outside under a tarp every year of it's life and ran great until a couple of years ago. Most machines don't get that lucky. This one can be saved with a cleaning, repaint on the hood and a seat job.
~Jack

[harleysportster]

Jack,
It sounds like you have the experience / knowledge to repair the sled if you have the tools.
Your problem could be any number of things from a simple switch not working to wires chewed off to a bad cdi component. I suggest checking out the FAQ section for something you may overlook.
Good luck.

[JDT]

Something that sat that long was probably a popular rodent condo. I too would look very closely for little teeth marks on the wiring. urine on the connectors and switches. Your meter will find the problem I bet.

[JDXspec]

Like stated already the ohm meter will find your problem if any. with the kill wire unhooked and the ohms ck out its your cdi box.

http://s12.zetaboards.com/jdsleds/topic/3001/

[guitardude081]

I did check it over pretty good for rodents. The year after we picked it up a squirrel family had made it's home under the hood. We fixed that issue with the pellet gun. There were a few out of the ordinary things that I saw. A few in-line fuses that I don't remember being there before and some of the wires were disconnected from the junction box. This was all lighting/acc. system related. I did some brainstorming yesterday and the one thing I didn't think of is that stator resistance changes w/ temperature which ultimately wears them out over time. The garage isn't heated so the sled goes from -40 to 100 above over the course of a year. I'm still thinking CDI, but I should probably test the stator before I install one.
~Jack