Yes, I have pulled the shroud and ensured no FOD in the cooling area. I had thought about ignition coils, but like previously posted, once it starts it fires evenly and smooth, and only hard starts cold. I will have to look into that tool, it looks better than the “lighting up” one I have now.
Hello Propflux01,
The adjustable air gap spark testers have always been reliable and consistent. The bulb type "lighting up" ones have always been questionable to me and easy to break (the bulb element). The example shown of the adjustable one has a segment with "SE", that is for small engine coil testing.
One thing that will trick you on the V-twin small equipment engines is that it will seem to run smooth until you put it under a heavy load and try to cut with it. They do not give any hint, because there is no vibration or rocking of the solid mounted engine, just a loss of power.
At first, a person will blame a plug or the coil, swap them out only to find the problem still exists.
The V-twin engines have a kill wire harness (segment) and each wire going to the individual coils contains a small inline diode (usually hidden by shrink tape). The diode is there to prevent the coils from back feeding each other during key off shutdown of the engine.
I recommend you replace the plugs and run the engine for a few minutes to get the temperature up. At that point, use a spray bottle of water and shoot a burst/stream of water on to each exhaust pipe outlet. If a cylinder is working well, the water will immediately burn off the exhaust pipe.
If the water does not burn off quickly on one pipe, that indicates poor combustion/power on that cylinder.
There are several factors that create a weak cylinder, but let's not get ahead ourselves.... Let's see how the new plugs work out first.
