At about 1985 and later, HONDA motorcycles maker started to recommend two multimeter as best choice for CDI inspection / measurements.
This information it is found at most HONDA workshop manual.
First digital DMM listed is the
KOWA KS-AHM-32-003, the actual more friendly name is
KOWA KE-32-3Second choice is
KOWA TH-5H analog multimeter.
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What made HONDA to recommend these two multimeter ?
What was the electrical measuring challenge?
The answer is rather simple today.
Back then, the new revolution were
the CDI (electronic ignition circuit), this came along of the use of high voltage ignition coils of very low resistance.
Test and measurement industry of 1985 in Japan, this had to deal first with the new challenge.
It was needed to be invented a portable multimeter this able to measure 0.3 Ohm ( 300 Milliohm) and the readout to be eye friendly too.
HONDA this activates
https://www.kowa-seiki.co.jp/ that is motorcycle service tools maker and distributor.
KOWA activated unknown to us multimeter company, and they came out with two special solutions.
The digital KOWA multimeter, this was able deliver a measurement of 0.3 Ohm with the LCD this to display
.003While the analog KOWA multimeter, this had a more detailed (printed scale) in which it was very eye-friendly
from zero Ohm up to 2 Ohm, as you can see at the attached picture.
A few red lines were enough so the motorcycles engineer, to be able to focus his eyes at the measuring range of interest from the entire measurement range = x1 Ohm.
KOWA digital multimeter this was strangling to display the measurement with only three digits resolution.
KOWA analog it was strangling too, and it was the second choice because its well known that analog multimeter
they are not drop proof, and their moving mechanism this is extremely prone to damage.
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Since the year 2011 and later we have seen several
modern digital multimeter, well made ones from Taiwan, Japan and the USA.
The modern replacement of the old KOWA and SANWA multimeter, is the ones with
lowest possible Ohm range, along with
high resolution at
Ohm measurement with four digits or more.
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At the recent KOWA products catalog 2020-2021, KOWA selected BRYMEN (Taiwan) as their partner for CDI measurement and diagnosis.
The specific multimeter support also RPM measurements.
Not all multimeter out there they are designed to deliver low ohm sensitivity along high display resolution.
Several FLUKE multimeter, marketed as electrician multimeter, they simply cannot deliver according to HONDA requirements.
This period of time, at my HONDA AX-1 (NX250) I am investigating CDI damage, and I will use this as opportunity so to test most multimeter samples at ITTSB Blog, so to discover which of them they are the best candidates so to measure as low as 0.3 Ohm ( 300 Milliohm).