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Narrow Case AC vs DC coil

Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2018 10:51 pm
by Moto Chuck
I know that the red label coil is a DC coil for a battery setup and the green label coil is an AC coil for a magneto setup. I have several coils in the parts bin with no labels. How do you tell the difference? Have seen that there is a difference in the secondary resistance but don't know how to test the difference. Which terminals do I check?

Re: Narrow Case AC vs DC coil

Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2018 6:28 pm
by Rick
The primary coil is between the 2 battery posts- probably marked '1' and '15', and the secondary is between one end of the primary and the spark plug output. The battery '+' usually goes to '15', so measure the primary between '1' and '15' and the secondary between '15' and the spark plug output. Depending on where the primary and secondary are tied together you may be adding the primary coil to the secondary resistance, but it won't be much- you can measure between the spark output and both coil posts- if one reading is significantly smaller then that's probably the secondary coil alone.
Rick

Re: Narrow Case AC vs DC coil

Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2018 7:08 pm
by HMBAtrail
Aren't the AC coil terminals marked 1 and 15 and the DC terminals marked + and -?

Re: Narrow Case AC vs DC coil

Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2018 5:03 pm
by Samurai
I've just purchased a DC coil from Classic Ducati here in the UK and the posts are indeed marked + and -, the same as the original Ducati coil that I had with the bike (175TS).

Hope I'm right in connecting the ignition feed to the + and the points connection to the -. The coil was never attached when I bought it as a project, but it seems to run OK?

What are the implications in accidentally swapping the connections over, or doesn't it really matter?

Re: Narrow Case AC vs DC coil

Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2018 5:10 pm
by tobydmv
Moto Chuck wrote:I know that the red label coil is a DC coil for a battery setup and the green label coil is an AC coil for a magneto setup. I have several coils in the parts bin with no labels. How do you tell the difference? Have seen that there is a difference in the secondary resistance but don't know how to test the difference. Which terminals do I check?



Measure the resistance on the primary winding. Set your multimeter to ohms/200, zero out the meter by touching the leads together, then touch the leads to the screw terminals on the coil. An AC coil should have lower resistance than a DC coil. I just went through this exercise on my scrambler and found that the 2 coils I had tried were wrong for a scrambler. I bought the right coil from Guzzino and it measured the same resistance as my stator coils, which I think was 1.2 on the 200 setting. The other coils I tried measured out at 2 and 4ohm on the 200 setting, which I think means they are meant for battery ignition usage.