Motorcycle Repair: Bike dies while riding, triumph bonneville, cylinder head

Question
Chris,

I was riding my 2003 Triumph Bonneville T100 today and it died on me several times.  I would be going just fine and all of the sudden it would die, tach to zero but the lights, turn signals, etc still worked.  There was fuel in the carbs, I checked.  It would crank but not fire and after waiting for 10 minutes it would fire up.  After it happened the second time I held the plug to the cylinder head and cranked it but there was no spark.  What's the deal?  Is this common or have you seen this before?  If so what was the fix?  I got it to the dealer but after 30 minutes on a flatbead it would not fire.

Answer
Hi Dave.
 You have either a short in the ignition circuit, or the coil is starting to go bad.  The coil needs to be bench tested to see if the problem is there, then, if no problem is found, start looking for intermittent shorts in all of the wiring between power and the ignition coils.

I have heard of this happening before, just to a Yamaha XJ900RK.  Mine.  We never could find the fault.

Hope your luck is better.
Let me know what you find.
Good luck.
FALCON