Paul Evans of Internal Fire made a most generous donation of a Briggs & Stratton generator to our Saxon Longhall project. It had been standing around for a year and needed a "bit of love and attention" as he put it.
Getting it home, I quickly established there was no electrikery flowing down the plug lead and it wasn't the on/off switch.Real life got in the way for a few weeks, but I had a chance to look at it yesterday.
There was no spark at all and a tentative finger on the lead showed absolutely no current. In my experience, this is usually indicative of something simple and fixable. Low current might be gungy points, but might also be a Knackered coil.
I took the rope starter off and was nonplussed to find there was apparently no nut to hold the flywheel on, only a strange, knobbly, zinc diecast thingy which turned out to be ball-loaded freewheel. Close inspection showed it had percussion marks on some of it's faces, so judicious application of a brass drift soon had it off , as securing nut it actually was - although you'd never know it to look at it!
Loading the cast iron flywheel rim outwards off the crankcase with careful pressure and tapping the outer faces of the fins with a leather hammer soon got the flywheel off. The points were open but not moving. Many B&S engines have a fibre pin that is driven off a concealed cam, raising the moving point by proxy, as it were. They tend to get gummy if left to stand and this one was no exception.
Cleaning the points with my usual sliver of 600 grit wet & dry lubricated with meths and reassembly now produced a spark - not huge, but that'll improve after the first few revolutions.
Watch this space!
Regards,
Kim Siddorn