Hey everyone. New member here and really glad to be joining this giant community. Last week i picked up a ‘76 DT175. It’s missing a bunch of stuff, like most of the wiring harness, lights, battery, tach, etc. Seems like someone took this bike and stripped it to its minimum to run it as a dirt bike. It came with the stator/flywheel disassembled. The stator came with just the ignition coil, no lighting coils, which as I understand should still be able to run the bike. I noticed that the wiring on the condenser was frankensteined, a giant mess of wiring and solder. This mess was almost definitely touching the sides of the condenser which would have grounded out the spark. I undid this mess and am now about to wire everything back up to the condenser. Does anyone know if the wires can touch when they reach the condenser or are they supposed to be separated at each terminal? I’m thinking that tomorrow I’ll join my source coil and points wire and wire them to one terminal, and wire the outgoing wire from the ignition coil to the other and see if i get some spark. The ignition coil is new and i’m thinking if I still don’t get spark, I’ll buy new points/condenser. Thoughts anyone?

Pictures of what you are working on would be very helpful.

Thanks for the response Mark. Here’s some photos of my stator and condenser. I didn’t take any before I removed of the solder mess, but you can see the three wires and two condenser terminals bent up and out of the way.

Thanks. Makes sense now. Those are wire retainers, not separate terminals. All three wires solder to the single center terminal of the condenser...

I'm sure there are pictures on the site showing DEET's work on how they are attached and how the tabs are bent down to hold the wires... shorter tab holds the stripped ends and longer tab is bent over the insulated part of the wires.

Ohhh... That makes much more sense. Wondering now if this mess was the issue causing my lack of spark. Not sure if you can see from the photo, but the one end of my ignition coil is a little bit loose, not tightly wound. Other than that it’s in tact and connected. Would this be causing a lack of spark?

If any wires or solder were bridging to the condenser body (ground) like you said, that would do it.

Can't really see the coil... if wires are intact, probably okay. You could check with a ohmmeter. Securing would be a good idea.