What are the symptoms of bad ignition coils and what are my options for changing out my original coils?
At some point in time, the original coils start getting cracks in them and go bad. I’ve seen this happen on these 1300’s as early as only 7000 miles! It’s not the best way to go, but you can bolt on the coils from the slightly newer Kawasaki’s (80′ – 85′) with the removable leads and a primary resistance of 2.5 ohms in the same holes as the old ones. These coils were used from 1982 to about 1989. The important thing to remember is that you remove the ballast resistor (if so equipped) so the total resistance to the CDI box is correct when installing the 2.5 ohm coils. Otherwise you ll have problems with the primary resistance being too high. The original coils have a primary resistance of 1.5 ohms, and in conjunction with the 1.2 ohm ballast, the CDI sees 2.7+ ohms or a little more. If the ballast goes bad and shorts out as it sometimes does with the original coils, the CDI would quickly burn up since the original coils are 1.5 ohms. Alternatively, if you use the ballast on the newer 2.
