Coil test question

i am trying to test the coil on a Yamaha Grizzly 80. Service manual says 1.4–1.8 ohms for primary, 5.3-7.9 for secondary, 10 for cap. Used my cheap meter and the secondary and cap test fine, however I as not able to get a good reading on the primary. It keep moving around. Got the same result with a friend’s better meter. Ordered a new coil. When I got the new coil I got the same readings with my meter so I ordered a much better meter—Mastech MS8268. I still get the same reading with the new meter. Apparently, measuring very low resistance is almost impossible without a very expensive multimeter. Anyone had the same problem? Any ideas or suggestions. Guess I’ll just install the new coil and see what happens.

 

resistance that low can be tricky. you can't touch the leads or you get measured too. best to zero the meter with the leads held together with vice grips(lightly), with meter zeroed push the meter leads into the conductor of the spark plug wires and set everything down the reading will settle down and give you a reading

 

I may try some alligator clips if I can find some that I can fit the probes. The meter I bought doesn’t have an external way to zero the meter. It says for very low readings to touch the probes together and get a base reading and then subtract that from the reading on the coil. Seems iffy to me.

 

that's a fine way to do it. the resistance of 1000 feet of #16 wire is only about 4 ohms so how much could the meter leads have. the thing about a coil is your meter puts a small voltage through the coil and makes magnetic fields ....then things get complicated.
the trick is don't move it or the readings go haywire

 

I can believe that’s! The readings move all around at those low readings. I’ll post how it goes.