Motor was growing harder to start at the end of last year. Died taxiing in on the last flight and I never bothered with it figuring I would be going over it during the winter. To check for spark I pulled the plug and heald it to the motor then flipped the prop and She has good spark.

Jodi , Ralph, Bill and Milton have probably close to 200 years of experience combined.

PM them and see if they will help you. Personally I think you need to do maintenance on your plug, cap, resistor, silicone insert and spring. Just because you see a spark does not mean it is ok.
For a hot spark that will light the fire there can not be any issues with the plug wire and cap components, ignition battery etc.... So even a tiny tear in the insulator can cause a problem and be very difficult to find.

I will second that, I bought an engine recently that would not start when new. It "had spark" too but in an act of desperation I stuck a spare ignition on and it fired on first flip.

You didn't answer the second part of my question, with trying to start it that long you should have gas running out the carb and spitting out the exhaust.....are you able to flood it? If not you have a procedure and or fuel issue.

Originally Posted by terryscustom

I will second that, I bought an engine recently that would not start when new. It "had spark" too but in an act of desperation I stuck a spare ignition on and it fired on first flip.

You didn't answer the second part of my question, with trying to start it that long you should have gas running out the carb and spitting out the exhaust.....are you able to flood it? If not you have a procedure and or fuel issue.

I saw that last year at our field with a older DA150. It had fuel, compression and looked like it had spark, but it wouldn't even pop. They swapped out the ignition and it fired right up.

I am thinking mare and more it's ignition. Possibly sheered key or ignition just gave out. I am able to flood the plane out and it will not fire with ether. I'll let you know what i come up with this weekend. Thanks for the input guys!

Originally Posted by machu951

Jodi if you have nothing useful to input please don't input anything.

Bad Jodi! Bad Jodi !!! Go sit in the corner!!


There, that should do it !

Originally Posted by Jetpainter

I saw that last year at our field with a older DA150. It had fuel, compression and looked like it had spark, but it wouldn't even pop. They swapped out the ignition and it fired right up.

I think you're on target.

If you decide to get a new ignition check out C&H. Just put one on my 111. $120 best price and best ignition in my opinion. Sure glad to see them back again

have a 3w that was hard to start for years took off 3w ign replaced with rcexcel starts easy now sometimes it is easy to get stuck on a given thought and ignor whats in front of you

Originally Posted by vmceachern

If you decide to get a new ignition check out C&H. Just put one on my 111. $120 best price and best ignition in my opinion. Sure glad to see them back again

That's great news...was it a genuine C&H ignition or a Chinese unit "built to their specs"?

Made in the USA

Lol!

Originally Posted by machu951

I have been flying my DLE 55 for 4 years now and it has hundreds if not thousands of hours on it. I decided I would give her a treat and spruce it up. I ordered a new carb, reed valves and acomplete gasket kit from tower, and placed an order for a bowman ring. Took it all down and looked everything over. To my suprise everything was still extremely tight.. I cleaned the motor up installed the new ring, did the reed vlave modification, and put it all back together. Put it back in my plane with a new plug and fully charged batteries and got ready to be amazed. Well to my suprise 150 or so flips later she never even popped. Checked for spark, fuel , and compression. All are up to snuff. Tries squiriting a little fuel in the carb and still no even a pop. Sparyed a little ether in her and again nothing. What am I doing wrong?

The OP is what got me going.

1. The longest running DLE55 on the planet might make it to 100-150 hrs. if one is very lucky.
2. Yet after thousands of hours it's still "extremely tight", what the hell does that mean, and yeah right.
3. Flip it 150+ times without a pop, with these other two exaggerations in mind, I'm thinking it was only 3 or 4 flips.
4. Spark, fuel, and compression are "all up to snuff". If so, I would think it would start, run, and "amaze" you, would it not?

What are you doing wrong? Could be anything, perhaps everything. With an OP so full of inaccuracies, it's impossible to armchair troubleshoot anything if one could help. And I don't care how many times you flip it, you're not tough enough to shear a DLE55 woodruff key by merely flipping the prop. Maybe you just forgot to install it at all?

It does sound like it could be ignition related though, as in....ignition isn't happening.

Originally Posted by vmceachern

Made in the USA

Glad to hear that. Thanks.

They will spark when held against the cylinder in the open air if it is weak. However a weak ignition will not create a spark during a compression stroke . Compression suppresses the spark enough that sometimes they will not fire at all.

As for you JJ one one hundredth of the decorum the late PE Reivers had would serve you well in more ways than one !

Try changing the sparkplug cap