Stick Coils

Finally used them...

Now, there might be stick coils on the ford I bought (used), I haven’t honestly looked. But I don’t think I’ve ever owned a car or other vehicle with them before.

Well last week I was on the old ZZR1200 forum, and someone was asking about wires (you can’t buy them anymore, they stopped making the ZZR1200 in 2006 - mine’s a 2003). One of the members (in Australia - this bike sold huge overseas, Kawasaki didn’t even WANT to sell it in the USA) mentioned that he’d upgraded to stick coils not that long ago, and it was easy. Plus you lose the two coils in the bike and the sparkplug wires.

Turns out a lot of owners are starting to go this route and the schemetics and instructions are easy enough to find.

Now I’ve been looking at my 22 year old coils and thinking that they’ve been getting weak of late, but they don’t make ‘em anymore. My current wires are newer than that, but they’re still a bit old. So I ordered 4 stick coils and the ignition wiring harness off a scrapped Kawasaki ZX bike that’s newer and used stick coils.

The hardest part of the job was taking the bike apart (you have to pull the tank then the airbox and this takes a while - I’ve done this a lot over the years, but it’s always a pain). Next hardest was stripping the crap off the harness, resoldering the ground wire, and making sure I knew what connected where. That done I put spade connectors on the 4 wires I needed and connected them to the wires that had previously gone to the old coils. It’s pretty straight forward and it started right up.

Without those two coils or the sparkplug wires there is a bit more space on the top of the head and under the airbox. It seems to run fine - several members have said their’s run better now with the stick coils, as they sit right on the sparkplug, instead of having to go through wires. It does seem to be running a little better, but I’m not supposed to ride any motorcycles until a few more weeks go by (shoulder stuff). So I won’t know for sure until then.

Definitely thinking of a small road trip. The last few years I’ve not gotten much riding in.