New mills...Something to look out for

MattM · May 23, 2023, 02:48:02 PM

Just thought I'd share something that I found on my 2023 LT35HD yesterday.

With only 35 hours on the mill it started to have no power when in the wood. I had just filled up the gas and thought that maybe I had a bad can of gas.

I syphoned it out and replaced it with fresh high octane and the mill still had very little power.

Pulled the plugs and one was fouled. Though maybe the plug was dead but I had some new ones so I changed it out.... Still ran horribly.

Broke the mill down, brought it home to further check into things.

Put a spark plug tester on it ( the type that grounds to the engine and is adjustable). When hooked up to the bad side engine would run like normal and no spark on the tester even with very little gap (<1/8).
Put it on the other coil and engine wouldn't start on the obviously bad coil, but a strong spark with a 1/2in gap.

Hauled the cover off the engine to look at the wires on the coils to make sure the bad coil didn't have a chafe that was grounding and lo and behold the good coil had a HUGE gap. It's supposed to be 0.011-0.013 and when I checked it was 0.028!!!

It obviously wasn't the problem with my bad coil but I see on the Facebook groups post about ignition issues all the time and I wonder how many of these Kohler 25hp engines come from the factory that far out of wack and just thought that people should know that it might be something to look out for.

Anyways I switched my two coils to make sure there were no problems with the wire going to the coil and the dead coil stayed dead.... So thats my problem... :'(

If you look closely you can read the .028 on thefeeler guage

Edit:
Also my WM dealer is great, contacted him today about the coil and one is being sent express right away 8)