Stick Coil Sticks it to me

[realshelby]

More to add to this story! 6/09 I started this post (44K miles) when I found my right stick coil was the source of hard to diagnose problems.

 

At my 48K service I paid special attention to the TBS, after new plugs, valve adj, and general maintenance. I was feeling a noticeable "BUZZ" (from the bike, not me) in the 4-5K range that did not seem right. Bike had not felt "right" for a while and I thought the tune up would help. It didn't hurt but the symptoms were still there. I had been putting quite a few miles on the V-Strom which kept me from being too concerned with the RT. Well, at 50K it has a new left stick coil! LSS, that was the problem AGAIN! Starts better now, MUCH better throttle response, seems to have more power especially at medium to heavy throttle. I have been getting 40mpg for a while, I am anxious to see if that comes back up now. This coil had a manufacture date of October or November '02, I assume the one I replaced earlier was about the same.

 

I would have replaced the coil a couple months back but the dealer did not have one in stock ( had one last time, probably did not replace the one I bought) but could order it ($125 + tax). I checked another dealer in town ( Gulf Coast)and he acted like I offended him by asking for such a thing " I have NEVER stocked one of these!" So, I ordered one from Chicago BMW. Arrived quickly, cost with shipping was $112. Like was mentioned in another thread, you don't get the discount till after they run the credit card.

 

My RT is early production ( 12/02 ) and I wonder if the years and the miles are going to be a sign to replace stick coils for others.Sure seems to be a lot of them going out in the 45K range.

 

 

 

[dirtrider]

Morning Terry

 

Hopefully the new (improved) coil will hold up longer that the original. The latest replacement coils (new P/N) seem to be dong better than the early OEM coils.

 

 

[realshelby]

Morning Terry

 

Hopefully the new (improved) coil will hold up longer that the original. The latest replacement coils (new P/N) seem to be dong better than the early OEM coils.

 

Let's hope so. I have been following the other stick coil threads. I am pretty sure mine are VERY early production. I watched the same thing happen with Ford and their "stick coils" know to the car world as COP. They were considered a maintenance item and it was very common to see them start to fail at around 60-80K miles. I would tell customers to just replace them all as a few more were likely to fail in the near future. Now it seems like the failure rate is very low.

[NonComp]

They also seem to be a problem on the Jeep Grand Cherokee of a few years ago. And they are horribly expensive.

[peterbulgar]

What everyone else has said - difficult to diagnose, symptoms could be caused by many other things.

 

One of my stick coils began acting up in the middle of a cross country trip. The first dealer I visited did a complete 24k service, including fuel filter and plugs. Finally, a dealer in Kansas City swapped the right coil with a new one and the symptoms went away. He suggested replacing the left as well, and I agreed, but he only had one in stock. He pulled one off a bike on the floor. My bike had 60k miles at the time.

 

I wouldn't be too hard on the dealer who said he'd never seen a bad one. My own dealer claims that he's never seen an input shaft spline failure, and I don't think he's lying. He just has very lucky customers.

peter '73 R75/5, '04 R1150RA, '06 Kawasaki EX-500

[Eh2Zee]

I had the same confusing operational symptoms. Difficult to start, low power at lower engine speed (making me slip the clutch - bad), and surging on my '04 R1150RT with 28K miles. The bike was "new to me" at 24K miles.

 

So off I went to introduce myself to the local dealership to see what was wrong. I mentioned suspecting coil sticks but that was immediately dismissed and that they would investigate because they were the experts. They took the bike and charged me $50 and told me the bike was running "normally". But they'd be happy to do a TB Sync for $150...

 

Then I did a simple test. I bought a sparkplug grounding clip, removed the right side outer spark-plug, and let the bike idle.

 

No difference.

 

I repeated the procedure unplugging only the left side outer plug. Bike hardly ran. That led me to believe that the left side was actually operating whereas the right side was not.

 

Using that information, I went out and bought two stcik coils and replaced the both thinking that if one went bad, how soon would the other folloow?

 

Bike was back to its old self immediately.