Newbie question- No spark on ducati L twin

[SQLGUY]

I'm not sure what you mean. You can set up Dual Spark using a single cam wheel, which is what he has. Since the bike is odd fire and (AFAIK) has a single pickup he's going to have to have some advanced offset for #2.

[honda33cr]

If so, you should be able to use that to verify your trigger offset and advanced offset. On my bike, the timing light didn't always fire reliably during cranking. I was able to get a good signal out of it by wrapping a piece of primary wire half-a-dozen times around the plug lead and using that instead of the inductive pickup.

In The V-twin ignition woes you wrote that you wrapped a piece of primary wire around the plug lead. Could you please elaborate a little more, I am not used to the terminology that you are using. I am having trouble getting a signal with my timing light.

Any other suggestions on getting a good timing siganl would be appreciated. I checked the gun on my truck and it works great, just not on the bike.
Thank you

[SQLGUY]

Sure.

On my timing light the cord is removable. There are four pins in its connector: plus and minus power a shield ground for the trigger and the inductive trigger signal. I ran jumpers for the +/- 12V to the battery. I left the shield pin unconnected, and for the trigger I took a length of 16ga or so wire which I wrapped half-a-dozen turns or so around the #1 cylinder plug wire. I jumpered the other end of that to the trigger pin. That wrapped wire, for some reason, was able to provide a better trigger to the timing light than its stock clamp-on pickup. Once I had the bike running well, though, the clamp-on worked OK to monitor running timing.

Hope this helps.

Oh, by the way, does Megatune show RPM when you are cranking, or does it stay at 0?

Cheers,
Paul

[750essess]

I had the same issue with the timing light. I changed out the noise suppression spark plug wires for a pain old cheap copper core one and the light worked much better. After it was running, changed it back. Megatune shows RPM while cranking on my setup.

[SQLGUY]

I have solid core wire on my bike, and non-resistor plugs, but I do have resistor plug caps.

The reason I asked about whether Megatune was showing RPM's on his setup was to distinguish whether he had a timing problem or a synch problem. I think, though, that he had previously mentioned seeing pulsing at the switched side of the coils. If that's the case, then it shouldn't be a synch problem.