Be careful hooking up a car battery to the bike
DON'T DO IT WITH THE CAR RUNNING
It has been known to cause CDI ignition boxes to fry..............

and doing the starter damper isn't hard, just fiddly. Read the "how to"

 

Are you getting any voltage to the primary side of the coils when the ignition is turned on?

 

*droool* I like me some RC51!! Beautiful

I am getting voltage at the coils. Unfortunately I spent all weekend doing plumbing and getting my new homebrew setup hooked up and ready to go so no bike work. Since I have a spare bike to work w/ I'm just going to pull the alternator damper off my parts bike for practice then pull the one off my runner. Hopefully I can get a good damper or mix n match some good plates and make one. The more I research the more this just sounds like the typical damper issue combined w/ stupid cold weather. I know it needs that anyway as the PO said it was always a slow cranker.

 

Try starting with a jump from a good car battery before you go pulling the starter damper apart, just to see if it'll give the necessary oomph. Take heed of Shadow's comments though. Never run a car engine when jump starting a motorcycle. Not only can you fry your ICU but your regulator will probably burst into flames at the same instant.
Good luck. Fingers crossed.

 

Absolutely nothing wrong with your priorities there Drewski

Cheers, SB

 

Yeah, unfortunately this cold is very conducive to indoor projects and I have plenty of them! That and brewing. With this last upgrade I'm at 1 bbl (31-ish gallons) capacity.

 

Those kind of priorities are indeed an acceptable distraction from wrenching - imo too

 

I'm a newbie.. but...eh... if your not getting any spark in all 4 of your spark plugs.. and you said "my kill switch is on" ... eh. shouldn't your kill switch be off? If your kill switch is on, there your killing power before it gets to the spark plug but it will still show a good connection when you check it with the pokey thing.