Tecumseh HM80 head scratcher?

[Arkie]

Donor engine.

Tecumseh HM80 155627T

Guy gave me this electric start Tecumseh, has manual recoil, the starter was removed, has the electric start flywheel, see stator wires coming out from under flywheel. It uses the later model magneto ignition, no points or condenser.

It has good compression, no ignition fire. Magneto coil laminations was very rusted and the flywheel, looked like maybe several dogs had wet on the engine using it for a marking post (or maybe people) over the years.
I replaced the magneto with new $12 one (probably china mag from ebay)
installed still not fire at all with the kill wire off. Air gap on both mags set at .010 to .014. Not even a light spit of fire.

I can see where the flywheel has hit the old mag and bent some of the mag laminations. Cannot see any damage or marks on the flywheel magnet, magnet appears very strong.
No fire at all???????????

This no fire is apparently why the engine was removed from use.

Any ideas? (other than drain the oil and gas and use for a trot line weight)

[bgsengine]

I replaced the magneto with new $12 one (probably china mag from ebay)
i)

1) New is not the same thing as "Good"
2) Also try spinning flywheel backwards (plug out) I have had no less than three aftermarket ignition coils that were mis=assembled, and discovered they would produce spark if engine was spun over backwards
3) I'm assuming you're cranking engine over fast enough (spinning by hand won't always produce a spark, hard to reach 250 RPM that way)

[38racing]

Have you checked your spark tester?

[Arkie]

I replaced the magneto with new $12 one (probably china mag from ebay)
i)

1) New is not the same thing as "Good"
2) Also try spinning flywheel backwards (plug out) I have had no less than three aftermarket ignition coils that were mis=assembled, and discovered they would produce spark if engine was spun over backwards
3) I'm assuming you're cranking engine over fast enough (spinning by hand won't always produce a spark, hard to reach 250 RPM that way)

My thoughts also. New is not always good, especially from china.

Yes I spun it fast forward cranking direction with the spark plug out with the recoil on the engine. Dead on a Briggs spark tester and no fire across a plug gap.

I tried spinning the engine backwards by hand, (not using rope recoil and no spark) could not spin backwards very fast by hand.)
I was going to try flipping the mag around opposite direction but mounting won't allow such.

Ohms testing won't ID anything on this type magneto as far as determining good/bad. (as compared to the old points type mags that could be checked with ohmmeter for continuity)

Suspect bad new China mag?????

[Luffydog]

Does that engine have the little fiber rod in it that makes it fire. Been a long while now since I have worked on one might be thinking hm100

[Arkie]

Does that engine have the little fiber rod in it that makes it fire. Been a long while now since I have worked on one might be thinking hm100

No., not this one.

[Arkie]

I replaced the magneto with new $12 one (probably china mag from ebay)
i)

1) New is not the same thing as "Good"
2) Also try spinning flywheel backwards (plug out) I have had no less than three aftermarket ignition coils that were mis=assembled, and discovered they would produce spark if engine was spun over backwards
3) I'm assuming you're cranking engine over fast enough (spinning by hand won't always produce a spark, hard to reach 250 RPM that way)

I re-searched and found that several have had issues with the Tecumseh 35135 magneto replacement coils as no fire at all.

I ordered another one $16.50) from different vendor that at least looks to be different brand.

Do not care to spend the $60 price tag of some places. (for a most likely China clone replacement)

After reviewing I found that the 35135 coil replacement has issues with no fire quite often. (at the price most likely made in China) China to USA items will be getting worse with the trade deals (imports) going around.

The vendor verified the package was out of China.

I'll post back later when the other replacement is tested.

[Arkie]

Got fire.

The replacement $16 magneto when I removed it from the box had MADE IN CHINA paper tag.
Thought huh-oh, here we go again. Look little different with some part numbers and writing. (not made exactly the same as the new dud.

I installed and was surprised that it produced fire.

I''m hearing rumors of quite a few NEW China made small engine magnetos not operating correctly

[KE4AVB]

Arkie there is quite a bit of junk being sold by China vendors but China isn't the only source of junk after market items. Over the last 9 yrs I have tried a lot aftermarket parts. Some are good with a few even better than OEM and there is terrible ones that look good but just either don't fit properly, fail quickly due to poor quality, and others which are simply factory rejects. Brazil and India are a couple of the other countries.

In the last year I went thru a lot of bad v-belts from my normally good aftermarket supplier. Over a 1/3 of them were coming short; up to 2". That was about a $1000 cost in belts that I can't use. I even had the AM simple Echo fuel tank valves were failing as quickly as fuel mix hit them, wrong type of rubber used. I had a couple of Kawasaki AM voltage regulators to fail with minutes of installation last year.

But when it comes to electrical items it not only AM that can fail upon installation. I installed an OEM electrical brake controller and harness on a Toro a couple years ago that when up in smoke while sitting on yard as I was preparing the invoice. At first the vendor try to say that I needed to have installed a new wiring harness at the same time. Well the out didn't work as I had installed a new harness as old one was too corroded to use and I had ordered both parts at the same time from that vendor. It was supposedly one of those weather tight connectors but water still got into the connection area.

I do get a lot of cost complaints because I don't use a lot AM parts but when I explain that it is just worth the problems that they can have with AM parts they understand most times. Now it is something that I have tested and know the quality is there then I don't have a problem using an AM part.

I do use a lot spec'd bearings that are AM but they do need to be repacked with quality grease as what they have dries out with an year of use. These bearings are the same one the equipment OEM used just I get them at a lower cost as I cut one or more of the middle men. It like the Cub Cadet spindle taper bearings that MTD wants nearly as much as replacement spindle for them. They are selling the bearing and cup separately for the LM11949/10 set. A big between $80 and $16 per spindle and the particular Cub I was working on last year used three spindles. It is the same Cub that I ordered 6 AM spindles that were Rotary version that were defective which lead me to actually try rebuilding the customer spindles once I figure what bearings were used. Those AM spindle all were loose upon tightening the blades and they sat a 1/4" higher in the deck housing when compared to OEM spindles. I lost 2 weeks time having to fight with the vendors over the defective spindles. One vendor even charged me a 30% restocking fee on the defective spindles I return to them as I had to install them to find the problem. I ended paying for the spindles by the time I paid the shipping, the return shipping and that restocking fee.

[Arkie]

Yes about the weak grease in new replacement spindle bearings. I also re-pack them on my own stuff before installing.

AND I had bad luck with OEM Briigs opposed twin mag from Napa couple years ago, paid around $70 and it failed within two seeks, called local Napa and surprised to hear that it had a 2 year warranty, installed second ione and it failed few month later, in meantime I ran a $15 China clone mag to keep the machine going.

The 3rd Napa mag is still running ok, which is a surprise because it's now out of warranty.

Bad enough when it's happening to yourself, but even worse when you are installing these NEW junk/wimpy parts that seems to be designed to fail onto someone else eq and it's failing as design intended, just little sooner than design intended.

and lots of electrical and electronic parts have no warranty as indicated in the fine print.