Dammit! My Paso is still doing the "running on one cylinder" thing...

Went thru fuel system, cleaned carbs, nothing wrong.

I believe I've isolated it to the forward cylinder. A timing light shows a nice steady strobe on the vertical cylinder, but there's a miss on the forward cylinder.

Now here's the strange part. I've swapped every component, front to rear. I switched the wires on the coils, and then switched the spark plug leads. No change. I even pulled my spare pickups out of my junk motor, and swapped them. No change. I swapped the Kokusan boxes. No change. No matter what I change, the miss still shows on the forward cylinder.

I mean, what's left?

The only thing I couldn't switch was the Blue/yellow wire, which I checked with a Fluke meter, .2 ohms, reading good.

I'm really open to suggestions here!

Take a good look at the o-rings on the ldle circuits,If they are not perfectly round and flawless they can cause this sort of issue.

It would apply to any carb,without good orings the idle mixture will be way too lean.........very likely causing a misfired or dead cylinder
I use the NGK as well,many here swear by the Champions

Different story, Number one suspect on any Paso with a high end
miss is voltage supply to the coils. For 5usd you can get a digital led display and wire it to one or both coils and monitor the voltage or if you have a fluke set it on record and go for a ride,static test may not necessarily uncover some voltage drops. cheap led here
I have these all over the place,as about a cheap as they come and very accurate in most situations.

9Volts off? I'd say you found your problem. We have a relay mod included in our Weber.doc and there is much here in the F.A.Q.'s

YAHTZEE!

It's probably too soon to be celebrating, but I'm going to anyways! Ran just fine on the test drive this evening. (of course, this will be time #4 that I think I've found the problem, only to have it recurr a few days later!)

I'm a little perplexed as to why it was fine for 22 years with the cheesy coil wiring, and chose now to start acting up, if this is indeed the problem.

Higgy, Jon, anybody else involved with my various threads or the "wiring upgrade" posts, I owe you guys a beer!

Thanks a bunch,

Michael

Glad to hear you got to the source of "ONE Electrical ISSUE"
Now the fact that you found that one means there are many more. The fewer you take care of the quicker you will find yourself looking for an ignition module or a voltage regulator or an ignition switch..the usual expensive and hard to find parts that could and can yet be saved by checking every single ground and terminal for a good clean contact. In the worst case scenario you will watch your beloved Ducuati burn at the side of the road assuming you managed to get to the side of the road without incident. While at it dont forget to look at the wiring beyond any connection you fix. Electrolytic migration from the battery can severely compromise any wire. Not trying to scare you just enlighten you so that you can enjoy many trouble free hours of time with your Ducati of choice. A few hours spent here can pay major dividends down the road...

"Burn at the side of the road." LOL! I'm guessing you saw my AMA debut back in 2000 at Mid Ohio? Friggin' cheesy plastic foats on the Malossi carbs (DellOrtos) on my 900ss Pro Thunder bike.... That bike was a fireball!

I did replace every ground under the seat/engine, as well as a bunch of wiring on my rectifier. Thanks for the advice and help.

Michael

Mike,

Here is a link to the wiring upgrade thread:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=173

You are just getting corrosion in the wiring and connectors is all. Time to clean every connection and the ignition switch as well as the kill switch.