OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Repairs and Maintenance Questions on Engines Questions On Victa Two Stroke Engines Is it worth it? Mayfair

Have opened up the Mayfair. Put a compression gauge on the spark plug hole, it read 0 not matter what I did. There was a wire not connected which I connected to an electrical lug that seemed to have a wire missing, still no spark though when I checked for a spark against the body of the mower. The decompressor is tight in its bore but I notice it has a slight wobble when I touch it, not sure how important that is. It is a Series 70 mower.

Without the engine running the decompressor
is open so there will be no compression . try unscewing the decompressor and plugging
the hole with a spark plug then compression will be felt

Tried that but forgot to mention it in the previous post.

sounds like it needs rings man. still think its worth while provided the cylinder is ok

Thanks tomo, i neglected to say previously that with the muffler off the piston looked in reasonable condition and the rings were free moving. The bloody thing feels like its got plenty of compression but the gauge shows nothing.

the compression wouldn't be as high as your average car engine 125psi - 195psi so as long as you had two resistances one hard and one soft it would be fine.
as far as spark goes, sounds like the wire you reconnected was the kill switch.
remove the flywheel and give your points a light file or polish with fine sand paper.
you should then get something , dont often see coil failure .
cheers,tomo

Hey Tomo, how hard is to get the flywheel off on these mowers?

Not to bad with the right tools normally a 3 leg puller will do the job theyy do have a tendancy to seize on the crank, some times they lift off by hand

Flywheel came off easily, no puller needed. Bit lost what to do next. The points were fairly clean and the condenser looks new. I was expecting there to be dirt and rust but not the case. Gave the points a slight sand with very fine sandpaper. Anything else I should do before putting the flywheel back? Perhaps I should start a new thread on this as it's moved away from the original focus?

hey ! glad it came off easy .
the points look fairly healthy . one check before you put the flywheel back on is adjustment . pull your spark plug out and stick a screw driver on the piston at top dead center, mark the driver shaft then mark 3mm back toward you allow the piston to travel back to the 3mm mark on the screw driver (anti clockwise) 3mm before top dead center the points should just be starting to open , also just rotate the engine until points are open and check the gap it should be .020" (thou).
should have spark after the points clean

Thanks Tomo! It worked exactly as you described, getting a spark. Now for the compression.

sounds good now ! wouldn't go pulling the engine down , your visual inspection through exhaust sounds promising , just block decomp hole and make sure you have the two resistances.
those old 125cc normally run well after a points and carb clean.
as far as the loose decomp top , not uncommon and normally doesn't affect the operation
cheers tomo

I haven't been able to feel the 2 resistances as you described Tomo but I went ahead and put some petrol into the spark plug hole to see if it would fire up. I pulled a few times and nothing happened but on the fifth pull there was a small explosion, maybe I put too much petrol in. I thought good sign, at least something is happening. I then put more petrol into the spark-plug hole and after pulling on it about 10 times it started up and ran for a few seconds. There's still work to do on this but I'd like to know a few things.
1) I tried to adjust the timing the best I could, the fact that it took a number of pulls to get it going, does that suggest that the timing is perhaps not quite right or will it not start if the timing is out?
2) There's not much of the snorkel left and therefore plenty of air is getting in, would that have any effect in starting the mower?
3) The photo above shows how that instead of the conventional spark plug boot there is something resembling an electronic spade terminal, can I stick a screw into the high tension lead (what size?) and get a spark plug boot for it?

Hey there , the fact that the engine fires is a good sign .
as far as timing goes it can cause erratic running hard starting or even dislocate your shoulder (kick back) as long as your points are just starting to open at 3mm before tdc its close enough .

the snorkel is important as the air cleaner gives the engine restriction.

the spade terminal looks ok they originally came out with a similar terminal , a victa later model spark plug boot is easy to get heaps listed on ebay and then just a screw about 2cm long and not to fat will screw up the ignition cable, then push boot over top.

the hard start from fuel down the plug hole , most likely just caused from a wet spark plug from a little to much fuel , when the fuel is forced from the crank case to the cylinder in normal running the fuel enters more of a mist rather than a liquid, once you cleared enough of the fuel you put down the plug hole it fired .
cheers , mitch

Thanks Mitch sounds like you really know your stuff. Appreciate you answering all my questions. I've got a snorkel from another mower but don't remember what type of mower I got it, can they be easily adapted from one to another?

been tinkering with victa 2 strokes for a long time now they were all i ever touched once ! , as far as the snorkel goes the air cleaner pipe is a pretty standard size about 32mm should be able to dummy somthing up.
ill wander out to the shed and take a picture of what ive done in the past.

ok so this part is off a later victa 2 stroke with whats known as a g4 , its has the throttle cable running inside the snorkel , local mower shop should have one you can use .
remove the rubber end (or trim the rubber and use the bend )
remove the throttle control and cable from the other end .
you can get away with just pushing the pipe on to the carby like pictured and also onto the air cleaner .
make sure you re-use your hose clamp for good measure.

Thanks Mitch, pictures are very clear and great for understanding the process.

The spare snorkel i have is the corrugated type from the powertorque engines. I didn't manage to get the rubber radiator type hose which was the old snorkel off the mayfair over the corrugated hose, the rubber hose didnt have enough give. Can anything be done to stretch the rubber hose over the corrugated one?

Hey man . don't think its possible to strech it
over the corriggated one . but the corrigated
one will do the job until you find a rubber one