I'm progressing on my project (Hustler 900, Kohler K440-2AM motor) which I know very little about beyond general mechanical skills from working on cars, golf carts and ATVs. Right now I'm trying to verify that the unit has good spark to both cylinders. The previous owner had let it sit out in the weather uncovered for a couple of years before I got it. When I first tried to fire it up I had an OK spark on the rider's-side cylinder (fan side) and the driver's-side cylinder would spark when I first hit the ignition switch then stop as the engine continued to turn over. I tried new spark plugs but nothing changed. The spark plug leads were in pretty bad shape so I ordered a couple of new coils which came with new leads.
With the new coils and leads installed (they're positioned in a covered box up by the fan on the engine) I get a great, continuous spark on the rider's-side and a good spark on the driver's-side when I engage the ignition switch but again the spark stops on the driver's-side as the engine continues to turn over. I don't have a shop manual for this particular Kohler engine, but I did find one for the K440-2AS motor (snowmobile). The manual shows several different ignition systems and one of them looks pretty close to the one I have but it looks like there's two high-tension coils and one low-tension coil. I don't easily see a low tension coil on my unit. I connected the coils like the schematic in the manual showed (each coil has a brown lead, the rear most coil has a blue/red lead and the front most coil has blue lead, the posts on the coils have one marked with a #1 and one marked with a #15. The schematic I have shows the blue/red lead connected to #1 post and the brown lead connected to the #15 post on the rear most coil (which has the spark plug lead that runs to the driver's-side cylinder). On the front coil it shows the blue lead connected #15 post and the brown lead connected to the #1 post (and of course the spark plug lead goes to the rider-s-side (fan-side) cylinder). I did try reversing the connections on the back coil, but that just resulted in a weaker spark when I first hit the ignition. I was hoping maybe someone had previously solved this problem and could educate me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
