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As posted before, I now have 3 failed ignition stator coils. The only thing I can put it down to is water ingress into the dry side of the engine, then evaporating into the coil windings, heating up, expanding, then creating a short.... agree?

Anyway, I bought a new stator coil, soaked it in lacquer over night, and made a little drain bung in the bottom of the engine case ! Lets see how it goes!!

I think the better option would be sealing the water out. The drain hole will allow water in during water crossings, which could be bad.

Julien D wrote:I think the better option would be sealing the water out. The drain hole will allow water in during water crossings, which could be bad.

I agree. Having a hole in there is just asking for trouble IMO. Also, I doubt that is what is causing the failures unless you have a cracked cover and/or are not using a gasket (or using a bad one) on it along with a lot of exposure to water.

The drain hole has a bolt in it...

I tried sealing the water out, gasket goo in either rubber gromit for the wires, and goo either side of the gasket! It just somehow gets in there!! (never a lot, always some! and if you look on other forums with the electrical side being dry, a lot of people have the same problem )

I don't know what forums you are talking about but I have never heard of a KDX that went through as many stators as you.

I've seen one source coil fail from water trapped in the stator cover, and it was on a big orange Katoom.

I wasn't talking about KDX's, just dry side electronics in general. On most bikes the coils are lacquered so there is no problem, just as production gets cheaper and quality gets lesser, we start to suffer a bit because of it :).

And my bike came with a faulty coil, I replaced with electrex, a year later the electrex went and got a new one. I bought a spare engine, took that apart to test it and it had failed also!

Bare in mind these are pre-95 bikes

who knows what was up with the spare. Hard to say. I'm surprised the stock unit went out. Although the bike in question is around 20 years old, so perhaps it was just time? I am not at all surprised that the electrex replacement went out on you. I'm pretty sure they were well known for that. Probably part of the reason you can no longer find them. If I was confident that some problem on my bike was frying stators, I guess I'd start by checking that everything is grounding properly.

I don't buy water being the issue

Else mine would have died a long time ago

Mr. Wibbens wrote:I don't buy water being the issue

Else mine would have died a long time ago

Your's may have been lacquered!

And JulienD, they are still for sale on http://www.electrexworld.co.uk/acatalog/C31.html