97/96 club car spark dies starting

[ehquick]

I have a 97 club car, but motor must be 96. The Ignitor is located under front of motor not on coil. Thr problem is when I try to start it, I only get 2 or 3 good sparks to the plug, then its very weak. If cart starts at first Im fine, but most of the time it wont start. I have changes coil, ignitor switches. I just cant figure it out. Any suggestions.

[CP241]

Did you use OEM or aftermarket parts? What kind of spark plug are you running and what kind of condition is it in? If you use a set of jumper cables and run an extra ground from the engine block to the negative battery terminal does that help any?

[Fairtax4me]

Did you disconnect the rev limiter? Did you set the coil air gap to .012"?

Down the clutch side of the engine there's a white wire with a black stripe. That's the kill wire for the coil. If you have spark at all, the kill circuit is probably fine, but you can unplug the white/black from the black wire that goes to the rev limiter to test. See if the spark is consistent.

If still the same, disconnect the Brown ground wire from the rev limiter. It's attached to the mount bracket for the limiter. Check spark again. If you now have consistent bright spark, the rev limiter failed.

If still the same, if you have a separate igniter, the small silver box behind the rev limiter. That needs to have a clean mounting point on the engine so the case is grounded properly. Use an ohmeter to test the igniter, unplug the wire from the igniter, with the black lead on the case and red lead on the spade terminal you should measure 2 - 6 ohms. If it measures outside of that the igniter is bad.

If the igniter ohms measure correctly that only leaves the coil.
Assuming the spark plug is good, is the correct type, and is gapped correctly.
Spark plug should be an NGK BPR5ES. Gap .028-.032"

[chadwce]

I got a 1996 DS cheap three years ago because it would fail to start at inconvenient times. I worked on it many times and each time it appeared fixed but problem returned. I replaced everything in the fuel system some items more than once. Sometimes cleaning the plug would result in a start. This last time replacing the plug worked, and then problem quickly returned. So I started to suspect am intermittent problem in the ignition system. Finally based on this thread I replaced the igniter and I think the problem is solved. There were times when the spark looked weak and was white or yellow. Now the spark is blue-purple. Thanks for your help.