I ran into a problem Monday, time for the first lawn cutting of the year, trust me, at 73 I don't even use a riding mower because the vibration would kill my artificial knees, our landlords are a set of identical twins who love yardwork (as far as I'm concerned you could cover the front and back yards out to 50 feet from our home with a foot of small gravel and spray with an herbicide at regular intervals.)

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I did all the normal checks. The fuel was drained at the end of the season, from the fuel tank and carburetor bowl, the engine ran with fogging oil and the air filter cleaned, then the riding mower was placed in the detached garage.

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For the new season, the tires were checked and topped off, a new spark plug was installed, good gas used to fill the tank.

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The battery was on a float charger all winter.

Turning the key to start caused the starter to crank with normal speed but no joy, not even a backfire. I used some ether (I'm lazy) and got a feeble backfire.

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Testing with a spark plug showed an arc the gap, but, at peak compression it takes a lot more voltage for the arc to form, how much more voltage, I'm not sure. But a mechanic told me "Up to 4 times."

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OK how on earth do I measure up to 20kV?

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The Leslie Corporation offers a nifty inline tester with a neon bulb with terminals on each end. The tester goes in series between the ignition coil output and spark plug hot terminal. If good, as in adequate, high voltage is present, the neon bulb will flash pretty brilliantly, if the high voltage is low, there might be a dim glow. The Leslie

20610 INLINE SPARK TESTER is available at Advance Auto or online. I went with Advance Auto because we decided time was more valuable then a few dollars.

It was money well spent.

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Changed the ignition coil, PITA to get to, and presto, our landlords think I'm a genius. [Ha do I have them fooled or what?]

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We also used compressed air to blow debris out of the ventilation fins on the flywheel and generally clean the engine.

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The engine started instantly and ran perfectly. Looking back it is clear the ignition coil was dying over the last 2 or 3 summers because the engine runs smoother with a LOT more power.

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Our next joyful task will be to change the drive belts. They are a little frayed and I feel it's a lot better to change them when it's 50 then 90 with 80% RH. [Yippee I can't wait.]

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