Spark plug voltage

[ionbeam]

If my glass had a lid on it, I would not have bothered to go hook my meter to a ground wire and a battery. Apparently your glass has the lid on it.

Clearly I have no grasp of electricity and no willingness to learn what you have to teach.

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[Redfish Hunter]

If my glass had a lid on it, I would not have bothered to go hook my meter to a ground wire and a battery. Apparently your glass has the lid on it.

Clearly I have no grasp of electricity and no willingness to learn what you have to teach.

Last post <<CLICK>>

I was still hoping you would teach me. At least I tried to find out the answer. I did not fall back on my years of experience and list of credentials, I went out to see. Out of respect for what I perceived as two superior intellects with more experience, I made an attempt. I was always taught that it was hard to learn when you were convinced you already knew everything.

So sorry to have offended you, I would really, sincerely have appreciated it if you would have at least tried to doublecheck my little experiment rather than just take the "I know more than you so I don't care" approach.

 

[Constant Mesh]

There's obviously a conductive path somewhere between the battery's negative post and the earth. Some or all of your tires may have a layer of conductive grime, moisture on their surface. Maybe your winch cable is dragging the ground. Do you have liquid filled tires?

Maybe your meter's black lead is shorted to the ATV?

 

[mcatrophy]

...

mcatrophy is gathering up ammo as we speak...

Hey, leave me out of this. You can't argue with ... woops! Nearly wrote something I might regret. Good-night.

 

[RadioHowie]

...

mcatrophy is gathering up ammo as we speak...

Hey, leave me out of this. You can't argue with ... woops! Nearly wrote something I might regret. Good-night.

HEY!!! Where's that "Battle of Britain" spirit we've read and heard so much about???



BTW, LOVE your website! Especially the blogs about your early Triumph Cub and Trophy years. :thumbsupsmileyanim:

 

[Fred W]

Alright... I previously thought that maybe redfish was just trrying to mess with us. But I see now that he is really trying to learn. So the real deal (as I said previously) is that without a return path (aka reference) there is no "voltage", no electrical pressure if you will.

And since I am a glutton for punishment, I recreated Redfish's experiment, but without the rest of his ATV with the potentially compromised tire insulators. I've used an old battery (that I am just waiting to dispose of) that still has a small charge left in it. The absolute voltage of the floating battery should be of no consequence for this experiment.

First I measured from Hot to a grounded screw on an outlet to show the correct terminal was hot.

Next I inserted the black lead in the "neutral" of the outlet, which is tied to ground in the panel, to show that the neutral is actually ground

So, we can agree now that the neutral is the same as ground, right? I did this so that I wouldn't have to hold both leads and also snap the picture.

Now I will measure between the neutral and each side of the battery and get 0 VDC

But the battery has almost 5VDC in it.

Redfish... nobody here is trying to pull your leg or blow smoke at you. When I say there is no voltage without a return path (reference) I am being completely forthright and honest. Perhaps if you did some more studying and searching on basic electrical theory you may find a resource that explains it better than ionbeam or I have done so far.

 

[Bustanut joker]

I am a glutton for punishment

Next I inserted the black lead in the "neutral" of the outlet, which is tied to ground in the panel, to show that the neutral is actually ground

Since you are a glutton for punishment why don't ya add a leg to the positive and negative leads and hook em up to the battery while in this scenario?

Make sure you have video proof, a snap shot isn't going to capture the fun fer us guys.

 

[odot]

"In other news what was left of a man was found in his garage when his neighbors complained of the smell of burnt pig. Seems the man was checking to see if he could power his own house with a run down three wheeler battery. No other people were hurt in this accident but several transformers in the area had to be replaced to due the extreme load they endured...."

 

[Redfish Hunter]

OK, this is very painful. You guys are gonna tear me apart on this one and you have every right to do so. I went back and... Well, let me tell the story.

First, I am (fairly) well versed in electrical theory, I make my modest living as an I&E tech in a refinery. This initially started with me not fully understanding, I had questions. I was confused, and began to doubt my own knowledge, the instructors in my dim distant past and FredW. I did my little experiment, was very surprised, and I took a picture. I posted that, got irritated with the responses I got and in turn irritated some other folks.

Confused and pissed off I went back out to the 4-wheeler and parked it next to a receptacle under the carport and tried again. Same result as before. I read full battery voltage to earth ground. Earlier today I had pressure washed the 4-wheeler, it was dry by this time, the tires were clean and it was now parked on clean concrete, not dirt. I tested to both ground and neutral, I know they are bonded in my house, and I got the exact same voltage readings I would get when testing from the positive to the negative of the battery. I drove around to the ground wire I had used last night, same result, I read full battery voltage to ground.

At this point, I had really been doing some serious mental searching back into my school days and was still doubting myself. Added to that both FredW and ionbeam are normally right and neither one of them seemed to have any doubt. Thoroughly aggravated, I removed the battery from the 4-wheeler. I pressure washed it, dried it and carried it over to the same receptacle. It read 0.452 volts. :blink: Oh God, now what? I checked it over and over. Same result, no voltage to earth ground. I carried it over to the ground wire for the house, checked it, same result. The battery read 12.32 from terminal to terminal but would only read less than half a volt to ground.

I re-installed the battery, my mind reeling with how stupid I felt, and the knowledge that I had to go back and admit to you all that I was a hard-headed *******. Of course, by getting distracted, I put it back in backwards. I had to pull it back out, re-install it but I had already blown a main fuse. Now the 4-wheeler is dead, is parked behind the wife's car and I feel more stupid than ever. On a whim, I check to the receptacle and it reads 12.32 volts. I don't even care why that is at this point. I pushed the damned 4-wheeler out into the dark, put my tools away and came in here to type this.

So, I was wrong, I am sorry, and I hijacked this thread all to hell. FredW, I want to thank you for checking this out for me, I appreciate that you thought enough about it to at least try.

 

[dcarver]

RedfishH, if this is the worst mistake you make this week you are doing great, yes?

 

No worries about anything you posted. At least you have the courage to post what you believed to be true, you handled the professional difference of opinion with dignity, you re-tested based upon other peeps feedback, and then discovered and admitted the truth.

 

I see absolutely nothing, NOTHING, wrong with the entire learning curve here.

 

FredW, Kudos, again. You understood RFH was sincere.

IonBeam, you gave up to easily doode! RFH wasn't pulling your rope, all though I understand.

(Sometimes, just sayin' it's so ain't enough for us who know better... :rofl: )

 

All in all, a wonderful thread and no harm, no foul, no dog-piling Redfish allowed!

 

[mcatrophy]

...

HEY!!! Where's that "Battle of Britain" spirit we've read and heard so much about???

I keep what little spirit I have left for when I'm riding

.

...

BTW, LOVE your website! Especially the blogs about your early Triumph Cub and Trophy years. :thumbsupsmileyanim:

Thanks. I only wrote it so that I will have something new to read when my memory is completely shot. (Not long now.)

Actually I started the site as a depository for my pictures, but in learning how to create a web site, I wanted a bit of content to put in it. So I wrote some stuff.

One of these days I'll have to re-organise it better, it's grown considerably from when I started it. Should have done it when I moved it from a PC to a Pi, but it simply didn't happen. Getting even lazier I guess.

(Click on image for larger view)



Old (during a panic rebuild) . . . New (lower power, quieter, smaller...)

And the equipment I prefer to be using:



(More power, noisier, larger...)

 

[RaYzerman19]

So if I get one of those freshly knitted cummerbunds from Fred, and hook up my battery to either end, can I use it as heated gear? It's getting cooler here......

 

[jcyuhn]

Perhaps mamayama went to 4 coils simply because that is now a less expensive solution than 2 coils + 4 spark plug leads? To the engineer designing this thing cost control is of equal weight as functionality.

Off topic-ish: For many years I drove a Ford sedan with a Yamaha designed and built 3.0 liter DOHC V6 under the hood. Like many cars it used 3 coils firing 2 plugs each through a waste spark system. From the factory it used 2 different spark plugs on each coil - 1 with a platinum center and 1 with a platinum ground. But for service parts they sold only double platinum plugs - wisely not trusting mechanics to properly install the different single platinum electrodes.

 

[Fred W]

Perhaps mamayama went to 4 coils simply because that is now a less expensive solution than 2 coils + 4 spark plug leads? To the engineer designing this thing cost control is of equal weight as functionality.

Off topic-ish: For many years I drove a Ford sedan with a Yamaha designed and built 3.0 liter DOHC V6 under the hood. Like many cars it used 3 coils firing 2 plugs each through a waste spark system. From the factory it used 2 different spark plugs on each coil - 1 with a platinum center and 1 with a platinum ground. But for service parts they sold only double platinum plugs - wisely not trusting mechanics to properly install the different single platinum electrodes.

Haha!! That just shows the incredible lengths a manufacturer will go to save a few pennies per unit produced. With the volume of spark plugs these guys buys, that is all the difference between dual platinum and platinum on one side can possibly amount to.

It also dramatically highlights my point about half of ther CR8EIX plugs being wasted on an FJR.

As for the first question, I don't think having 4 COP modules would be less expensive, but probably not much more either. It is just the current state of design for all IC engines, and so is included in all of the new models.

A little COP story here, which may (or may not) be amusing. A couple years back I bought a 2001 Triumph Trophy 900. It is a triple (which was what I wanted) vs. the 4 cylinder of the bigger Trophy 1200. The 1200 was a wasted spark 2 coil design (like the 1G and 2G FJRs), but the triple had a coil and plug wire dedicated to each cylinder. Great right? Well, not so much.

The manufacturer speced out some really cheap ass coils for these bikes, maybe because there was an extra one under the tank on the triples?, and these coils had a common propensity for causing problems where they would quit firing the plugs at certain rpm ranges (I believe it was lower ones). The established "fix" was to buy 3 new coils from an aftermarket (rapist) in the US (Nology). I tried to go an alternate route and scoured up a set of COP coils from a later model Trumpet and wire then to the Solid State igniter module (the unit sending coil triggers to the coils). With my kludged COP coils the bike ran fantastically, but Triumph had some sort of half ass feedback from one of the ignition coils being sent to the tachometer circuit, so the tachometer was essentially useless. Technical FAIL!

In the end I ended up biting the bullet, paying the Nology dudes for their groovy upgrade coils, and got the bike running like it should have from the get-go (not too much before I sold the thing off). People that complain about a 1st Gen FJR heating their tender parts have clearly never ridden a BBBS Triumph Trophy

Oh yeah, I still have three really nice looking COP coils which make most excellent paperweights, should anyone want one.

 

[RadioHowie]

DIBS!

 

[Bustanut joker]

No.........

But I do have Warts on me Scrotum..