This guy may be on to something. If I hit a little rain it shuts me down.
It appears that if you are having problems with the ignition (spark plug firing) for the front cylinder, you may want to pull your gas tank and look at your front ignition coil.
The front coil hangs off of the left side of the frame backbone, under the gas tank. Water from washing or wet weather riding causes rust to form where the coil is supposed to be grounded to the mount bracket. When rust builds up, the front coil doesn't receive a reliable ground circuit. When the ground circuit is weak, proper voltage can't build up in the coil windings - causing mis-firing, weak spark, wasted fuel, reduced power and a cool exhaust is the most noticeable symptom.
Pull your coil, remove the rust from the coil end tabs, the frame mounting bracket and the two (2) U-shaped grounding clips (1 at each end of the coil body). Sandpaper and a file will work, or a small brass or steel wire brush will also help remove the rust. Coat everything well with dielectric grease and reassemble. You may not notice extreme improvement, but you may notice an increase in performance and in wet weather ride ability you may no longer experience missing or cutting out. (This was so bad on my bike if I was in a heavy fog - my bike would shut completely off !!!)
The rear coil doesn't experience the problem to the same degree, because of its "buried" location in front of the battery box area.
Let us know what you find.
Well I think he may have been right.
I did find a lot of rust. Cleaned it all up with sand paper greesed it up. Fired her up and I got a lot of black smoke when I hit the gas. Took her for a short ride wide open through 1st, 2nd, & 3rd gear both ways. Got back no more black smoke. So I am hoping problem solved.
I am going to run some seafoam in the next tank. Then I will pull the plugs in about 1000 miles and see how they look.
