What's with SRs that Won't Start Lately??

I usually pull the plug ,put the lead back on & then I make sure the plug touches onto the frame & push it over a few times with my hand whilst looking at the plug gap(helps sometimes if your in a darkish place ),and you should see a spark for sure! If there is a spark it can then only be fuel?Turn your tap to the prime position ,let it sit for a minute ,turn on the choke ,find the compression stroke on your window & kick its butt ! It should fire up within a kick or 2 cause they always do(it says so in the owners manual)! The exhaust will only come into play if its going & has nothing to do with fuel/suction/spark cheers Dave.

yes.

Lighting and sparking are two different systems. Try a fresh plug...they're cheap. Try it at night to be sure there is no spark. Do you have a service manual? Do you have a multimeter?

if you have no spark but want to be 100% shure do what i do,
grab a hold of the plug ang give her a good kick! won't killya if you do and your sure as to your results.
good luck,Bob

I'm gonna go fiddle with it to make sure, but I'm pretty certain that my kill switch is okay.. is there anywhere I can put a meter to make sure that I'm getting (or not getting) contact there??

Hi,
no spark?
Do you have a Multimeter?
You have to mesaure the resistance between the black and brown cable coming up to the CDI. Unplug the conector and take the plug down direction. There should be 300Ohm. (250Ohm min.) If there is no resistance the loadcoil for the CDI for start is gone. You can either let repair the coil or buy Steffi`s (CH) CDI Booster . (KEDONo: 41778 SR500 CDI-Booster
SR500-'92 195€) .
Regards
Rei97

Okay, update -

Putting my DMM on the brown and black wire coming to the CDI box gave me 315 ohms. That should be within tolerance, from what I can tell..

I tried some more experimenting with things. I sucked it up and put my screwdriver in the spark plug boot and touched the block while somebody kicked - nothing. That's a good thing, though, I think, because that would have hurt! Not so bad with a weedeater or something, but I tried it with my Concours once and DANG!

I hooked my meter up to the plug that connects the coil, and I got about half-a-volt jump. Just enough to see that it was doing something, but not enough to do anything important. If I'm not getting voltage to the coil, does that mean my CDI box is toast?