GL1000 -- Ignition Upgrades, Part 1

It's that time of year again, when the world grows quiet under a soft blanket of new fallen snow, when all of the birds, rabbits, squirrels and bears that frequent the woods near my house tuck themselves into their nests and burrows and dens, and when that most unpredictable of species, motocyclist insaneus, retreats into the warmth and comfort of the garage, preparing for the spring thaw only four months away.

In my case, it was New Year's Eve, my wife was pulling an overtime shift at her job, my teen-age daughter was celebrating at a friend's house, and so I decided to ring in the new year surrounded by some of the ones I love, namely, the motorcycles, lol. There were several niggling problems with the Goldwing that I needed to take care of, and therefore, handed a block of several hours in which I could dig into the 'Wing without feeling guilty about neglecting my family, I started the dissassembly process.

First order of business: sorting out the cooling issues. Near the end of summer, I was two-up on the 'Wing in stop-and-go traffic (far more stop than go, to be honest) when I noticed that the temperature gauge was indicating much higher than normal and climbing...quickly. On a test ride, I found the temp would climb when the bike was still or when under load at low speed, but would cool off again when cruising, and I noticed the fan didn't seem to be running when stopped. During dissassembly, I connected the fan to a spare battery, and found that it operated just fine, which was very welcome news since the radiator fan is no longer available from Honda for this particular bike. The next-most-likely culprit was the fan switch, still available from Honda at $$$$$ or from an aftermarket supplier for $$. I opted for the aftermarket part. Since I was digging into the cooling system anyway, I picked up a new, aftermarket thermostat and both upper and lower radiator hoses, as well. Note: the fan switch comes with an o-ring, but the thermostat does not; fortunately, my local Honda dealer, who doesn't typically stock vintage bike parts, actually had the o-ring I needed on-hand. Replacing the old thermostat and fan switch was pretty trivial. By far, the most difficult part was reattaching the rubber boot that contains the fan wires to the fan switch. Hint: reinstall the boot BEFORE reinstalling the water inlet (covering the thermostat).

Next up, ignition system upgrades. When replacing the points in the stock ignition last year, I noticed that the threads in the OEM points backing plate were kind of sketchy. I managed to install the new points (an aftermarket brand that has a reputation for sticking a bit, but all I could still find for the bike), but not trusting the points themselves or the stripped-out backing plate, I picked up a Dynatec electronic ignition and new coils later last year. Because the crankshaft in the Goldwings' horizontally opposed engines runs lengthwise through the engine (rather than below the cylinders as in a typical inline four), you typically use the bolt through the alternator to rotate the crankshaft to set the engine timing. Unfortunately, the alternator bolt on my 'Wing is more circular than hexagonal (hey, it was like that when I bought it!), and therefore, the only way for me to rotate the engine is with the crankshaft nut under the timing belt covers...meaning that I would have to remove the radiator to set the timing.

Because I already had removed my radiator for the cooling system work, this seemed like a good time to dig into the ignition, too. I started by removing the coils, which honestly was kind of a pain, due in no small measure to this junction box and all of the associated wiring.

After a little work (and a lot of swearing), I finally got them free. However, when I started wiring up the new coils...

...I found that the "included" 10-32 x 5/16 pan-head screws and terminal lugs that are used to attach the primary wires to the coils weren't. To be fair, I can't blame Dynatec. I bought the coils a little over a year ago, and I honestly don't remember if there was a hardware bag in the package or not; there's at least as good a chance that I simply misplaced the hardware bag as there is that Dynatec ommitted them from my shipment. In any case, it's easy enough to pick up new screws from the hardware store, and I already had a collection of terminal lugs that I could use, so no biggie.

I had a moment of panic as I prepared to clip the primary wires off of the original coils, when I realized that I had no idea which color primary wire went to which coil. Before removing the coils from the bike, I had carefully sketched out which coil provided spark to which cylinder, but I had neglected to include which primary wire (yellow, or blue with yellow stripe) went to each coil. Fortunately, the high-tension wires to the spark plugs are labeled, "1-2-3-4,"e; and as both the high-tension and primary wires were still attached to the old coils, I was able to determine that the blue/yellow wire goes to the coil for the #3 and #4 cylinders, while the plain yellow wire goes to the coil for the #1 and #2 cylinders:



Sorry, it's a rather poor photo of an even worse drawing, but if you found this blog post while searching for this information, hopefully you'll find it useful, anyway!

Anyway, after finally figuring out which wire to connect to which coil, I crimped terminals onto the primary wires, installed the coils onto the mounts, slid the new high-tension wires into the coils, and reinstalled the whole lot back into the tunnel:



Since this bike is now 40 years old, I decided I'd show some love to all of the electrical connectors that I disconnected to get access to the coils. Sketchy electronics can be a real pain in the a-(hem) to track down, especially on the side of the road, in the rain, at night, when such things are statistically most likely to happen...or something like that, anyway. To do my best to keep the electrons flowing, I pulled out my set of contact cleaners and a spray can of solvent made for, well, cleaning contacts (the electrical kind), and set to work. Once I was satisfied that they were clean (not terribly long, as they were actually in pretty decent shape), I smeared a little dielectric grease on the contacts, and plugged all of the electrical connectors back together...

...at which point, I found a strange, green wire about six inches long hanging out of my wire harness. Ummm, where did that come from??? A quick Google search later, I found that this is a ground wire for the coils that should be sandwiched between the coil mounts and the frame of the bike. I cleaned up the terminal lug on the wire, smeared dielectric grease on it too, then removed the bolt on the top coil mount and attached the ground wire.

All that was left for the coil installation at this point was rigging up the high-tension spark plug wires. I had attached the wires to the coils before installation, marking the wires with the cylinder number so that I could be sure the correct wire was run to the correct cylinder. Now that the coils were in place on the bike, I routed the spark plug wires between the carbs, snapped them in place into the stays, and cut them to length. Installing the new NGK spark plug boots was pretty trivial: spray the wires with silicone lubricant, slide the waterproof seal over the wires (trust me, the silicone lube makes this step MUCH easier!!!), then screw the spark plug boot onto the end of the wire. Once you cannot twist the boot any tighter, slide the waterproof seal down over the boot, and snap the wire in place on the spark plug. I actually intend to replace the spark plugs with new NGK Iridium plugs before spring, but for now, while I'm still connecting and testing everything, I'll leave the old plugs in place (if I mess up a plug while working on the ignition, I'd rather it be a $3 plain spark plug rather than a $10-15 Iridium plug).