been looking at this site for a couple o weeks now and seems like some great people on here so i decided to register and ask a question, I bought a 01 cat on craigslist for a hundred bucks, it needs alot of work,the guy i bought it from seems to think that the cdi is bad, I know for sure the voltage regulator is shot, the wires are melted, it looks like he lost the key and bypassed, and rigged up a toggle switch to the seliond, motor has good compression and everything else seems to be fine, my question is does the cdi have to work to get the plug to spark, I know it has to work to run, sorry if this sounds stupid im kinda new at this...thanks..

 

Yes if the CDI is completely fried you won't get a spark at the plug , sound's like the previous owner didn't know what he was doing when he tried hot wire the ignition ; no telling how much damage was done your best bet would be to get a good O.E.M. Service and Repair Shop manual then start looking for a new or used wiring harness and start from there rewiring the quad !

You should be able to find a good used wiring harness on ebay , and you might luck up and find a Service and Repair Shop Manual on ebay as well , there are ebay sellers who offer cheap downloads of these manuals in pdf formatte ; i have head other's talk about getting these downloads you can save to file and burn to disc good luck !

Whatever happens you didn't get burned for $100.00 for a 2001 AC 250 2wd , if worse comes to worse you could always part it out on ebay and make a profit while you're at it !....

 

thanks for the info, I got the manual, fixed everything so far except voltage regulator and the cdi box, I did the resistance test on the cdi according to the manual and its no good, all im waiting on now is to run across one on ebay I have emailed a few atv junkyards with no luck yet. maybe soon. i hope..been thinking about a universal vr but I would rather keep everything original. but yeah 409.00 cdi and 100.00 vr..sigh..parting out..is starting to look pretty good...

 

For 100 bucks even if you bought a whole new wiring harness and CDI it would be a good deal for a ATV.

 

Do a search for Heaton Chevy and Arctic Cat they sell older atv stuff. I bought a Voltage reg. speedometer and starter solenoid shipped for 170.00

 

well its been awhile so i decided to update I got my cdi 272 dollars at speed supplies, by the way the shipping from these people took 2 weeks when they said it would only be 5 days. anyway got the voltage regulator on ebay for 100 bucks, put everything else on it, it will fire up on choke but will not stay running, so i figured the carb just needed cleaning, so i cleaned it the jets were a bit clogged but put everything back together and still does the same thing, the carb thats on it is not original its for the 300 ac, dont know if that has anything to do with it or not, guess i will keep fiddling with it.....

 

If the carb and jets are clean I would look at the plug to see what color it is. YOu want it to be tan colored. If it is black and sooty then it is too rich. could be that the jets are not the correct size since you think the carb is off a 300 and not a 250. I am pretty sure they use the same carb for those machines and make to the changes the jetting and adjust the air mixture screw.

I do not have a manual in front of me but I will look to see what the jets and settings are supposed to be and get back to you.

SJ

 

thanks for the info SJ, well I got it running without the choke on smells a bit rich to me though, rode it around the yard only to find out that it now needs the left side drive axle so im going to order one off ebay there about 150 bucks unless someone knows of one cheaper, so I now have about 800 dollars total in this thing and still cant ride it, lol...well im going to go work on it somemore, and try to figure out why i have no dash lights all the other lights work fine but i have no neutral, oil, etc lights..thanks for all the help.

 

thanks for the info SJ, well I got it running without the choke on smells a bit rich to me though, rode it around the yard only to find out that it now needs the left side drive axle so im going to order one off ebay there about 150 bucks unless someone knows of one cheaper, so I now have about 800 dollars total in this thing and still cant ride it, lol...well im going to go work on it somemore, and try to figure out why i have no dash lights all the other lights work fine but i have no neutral, oil, etc lights..thanks for all the help.

 

thank for the share..this is a great help to me...i have been searching and reading finding these stuff and its here..i found it...thanks a lot..