Tried to fire it up for the first ride of the year.
Sunday reached 60 degrees and beautifully sunny in Michigan, today...23 and a forecast 6-8 inches of snow. :I
I was planning on a quick hop to the other side of town for a family event, figuring parking would be convenient, but, it wouldn't start, so I ended up taking the truck.
Went to kick it over, figuring I would prime it a bit with some slow kicks. Felt like I was stepping on a soft stick of butter. Okay, weird, so e-start... Turns over fine, fuel flowing...nothing. Pulled plugs, they are less than a year old and looked fine. Nice and tan, with a touch of damp from trying to start with the choke on. Hit them with a brass wire brush to clean them up anyway. I'm met with a weak, yellow, and intermittent spark. Cleaned the points. A little black dust, and some sparking across the points when opened and closed. Compression seemed fine, but will check with a gauge at some other time. At this point I gave up, since I had to get to the family thing.
At the end of last year, I noticed the clutch felt a little slippy under heavy load. I have a feeling this is a symptom of the squishy feeling kicker. Otherwise, I'm not sure if the weak spark is caused by bad wires, coils, grounds or something deeper in the charging system. According to chapter 3, section 6.3 of the service manual, the symptoms in my ignition system are almost verbatim to what the book says is a bad condenser(s). I will be investigating.