No spark. Solved: bad magneto

Not a lot of point to this thread. But it might be helpful to newbies.

I have a 50 cc, two stroke, china girl.

Last week, Wednesday I think, I was coming home from work in a good, heavy rain. In the blink of an eye it went from running fine to 'nothing'. I kept pedaling for a bit to see if any life came back to it. Naaahh......

I suspected that rain had gotten into the kill switch. Which was exposed to the weather, after all.

Friday I got home with a little daylight to work with. So I went straight to the bike. Made my first mistake there. Instead of cutting the black lead from the kill switch I cut the black lead from magneto to CDI. Still no spark. (Of course, under the circumstances) I didn't realize this error until I started working on the bike again this morning.

After splicing the cut black lead I tried a different spark plug. No spark. I then tried to check continuity in my spark plug wire. No reading. I grabbed a couple of other sp wires and checked them. Got nothing on one and intermittent readings on the other. Rather than believing that I had two or three bad wires I figured I must not have been making good contact with my multimeter probe.

So I opened the wires between magneto and CDI. I used expected ohm readings that I got from a post by 2Door in another "no spark troubleshooting" thread. No doubt others have posted this info in other threads as well. This just happened to be the one that I had found. All the same, thanks to 2Door for this and thanks to the others for their postings. This sort of stuff is very helpful.

I got some readings that were significantly different from what was expected. Either my multimeter is junk of there are individual differences from magneto to magneto, engine to engine, etc,.

Anyway, I found no continuity at all from the magneto blue wire to the magneto white wire. Open circuit.

I keep a spare, brand new, engine kit in my attic. So swapping the magneto was a snap. While I was doing it I found myself thinking that maybe I ought to just swap out the engine. Mine is beginning to feel a bit tired. But I decided to run it to the grave. I'll probably end up doing that swap in January or something like that. My wife doesn't like bicycles in the kitchen. But I can usually get away with it without suffering too much.

I've already ordered my new magneto. That'll go back into my stand-by engine.

I've already taken the bike out for a quick spin. It feels just like it always did. And I'll be going out again to get some more fuel for it after I get this posted.

But I don't expect any trouble. I think all is well.

Cool, CTripps.

It's the sort of thing that I might have done at one time. But things have changed. I haven't sworn off soldering small stuff completely, but my eyesight isn't very good for that task.

Not that my sight is all that bad. But I simply can't focus on small stuff close at hand. And I aggravate myself trying.

Good light helps. But usually not enough.

I've thought about carrying magnifiers, even. But I'd lose them or crush them in my pockets, etc.

Maybe it's time for me to look into some magnifiers.

I can get by in day-to-day stuff well enough. But having something right there on the workbench could be useful.

As a matter of fact, I do carry a strap-on headlight with me at all times. That extra light helps often.