Ignition?

Electrical/ignition help needed.
On one of my bikes, fitted with Lucas distributor and coil ignition, has decided to be a bit unpleasant. Always a good starter, settles down to idle quickly and will then tick over like a metronome for as long as you want.
Has now decided to be very difficult to start, very powerful backfires in the starting proccess. when it finally does start, runs ok for a mile or 2, then starts not wanting to rev, or idle and gets worse until it conks. very difficult to start again, after about an hour of swearing and checking everything I could, came back to life for another mile or 2, then conked out again.
I have checked HT wires, conections, and everything else I can think of...
Now I arrive at : coil or condensor?
Both cylinders are same, seperate carbs, so I am thinking it is components they share..
Battery is good,, seems to have a healthy spark when grounding a plug to outside of engine...

johnny Lagdon said:

On one of my bikes, fitted with Lucas distributor and coil ignition

Click to expand...

Do you actually mean a "distributor" or the points housing behind the cylinders (often referred to as a distributor although it isn't)? If you do mean a distributor then which Norton model is it? (if it's not a Commando this thread will be moved to the "Other Nortons" section).

Sounds like coils, I had one go intermittently, I could do 200 yrds before it would conk out and then need 5 mins before it cooled enough to give me another 200 yrds of engine time. Luckily I was 7 mils away from home on top of the highest hill in the whole county so I was able to coast most of the way. Same bike had earlier had the LT wire internally fray down to 2 strands, that gave also intermittent ignition but not related to the time the ignition was on, that took some time finding as everything checked out electrically.

Sounds like the advance setting is off, if not could be condenser or most likely a faulty coil.

OR, as many electrical failures turn out to be, it could come from the carbs side of things. You could have a leak between the admission manifolds and the head or the carbs. It could produce essentially the effect you are describing. If your manifolds are equiped with a small balance pipe, the leak could come from there and explain why the problem occurs on both cylinders.

Most likely condenser.

Kill switch on the bars getting wonky?