Cub Cadet weedwacker no spark

[turbofiat124]

Dad brings me his Cub Cadet weedwacket. I think it's a 25cc. I can get the model number if need be. It's not very old. Maybe built in the last 3 years.

He says it got to where it would start OK and run for 5 minutes then loose power but keep running. When I looked at it, the gas smelled stale so I dumped it out and put fresh fuel in it, primed it and tried cranking.

Afterwards I couldn't even get it started. I even tried spraying starter fluid into the carb and it still wouldn't start.

So I attached my spark testing tool between the plug and plug wire and checked for spark and it didn't appear to be firing. So I pulled the spark plug and wrapped my hand around the sparkplug while attached to the plug wire and grounded it to the engine block and gave it a yank and never felt a jolt. Yeah that's probably not the best way to verify if your getting spark but...

With this weedwackers is it safe to say the coil is bad? That might explain why it would run fine for awhile until the coil got hot but usually when this happens the coil just stops working altogether after a few minutes as what happened with old Snapper riding mower with a B&S 15hp engine after dad would make three laps around his front yard. Well from my experience.

Is this weedwacker made by Cud Cadet or did they just have someone else make it for them with their name on it? Meaning if I was going to look for a another coil, any chance I could pull one off another trimmer? Like a Poulan perhaps.

 

[possum]

That is an MTD product. I do not know if Poulan coils will work or not. I do know most guys complain about the price of coils. To be honest it would depend a bit on if the string trimmer engine is a 2 or 4 stroke unit. If a two stroke I would check the screen in the muffler and the kill switch before I replaced a coil. I would also try a little harder to find out if I had a spark. Try a new plug etc.

 

[turbofiat124]

That is an MTD product. I do not know if Poulan coils will work or not. I do know most guys complain about the price of coils. To be honest it would depend a bit on if the string trimmer engine is a 2 or 4 stroke unit. If a two stroke I would check the screen in the muffler and the kill switch before I replaced a coil. I would also try a little harder to find out if I had a spark. Try a new plug etc.

Thanks. Never thought about the kill switch. I've had numerous safety switches on Snappers fail causing no spark. I will give that a shot first.

 

[motoman]

Only experience here is Ryobi 2 stroke. It ran great 10 years and began to make a small noise. Pulled it down (not easy, they want you to throw it, and buy new) and found flywheel coil contact-very light. Long story short- component parts to refurb quickly reach the magical 1/2 new cost level so I bought another.

For fun I tested the spark on the new vs old. Both had visible spark with the grounded plug test. But the old Ryobi would not spark 1/8" (see diy trimmer spark tool) while the new trimmer had no problem. Conditions running much more difficult than not running. The coils may have electronic components in them (transistors, diiodes) which can fail to operated at hot.