[AT] spark plug gaps

[Cecil Bearden]

This message never made it to the list, so I will post it again.


Maybe we have cussed and discussed this before, but I had a problem
a couple days ago.

Guy called me up 9pm Saturday night wanting my 15KW ONAN generator that
is on Ebay.  He would be there yesterday before noon.  I got it running,
had to put in new battery and the spark plugs were not hot enough.
Seems that manufacturer specs are for D-9 champions, but takes D-16 to
fire this unleaded gas. It is a continental f186.  Got another
continental y69 in a forklift that had D-23's in it and it started
missing trying to move another generator it would not even untrack
itself.  I took the plugs out and cleaned them and had the same
problem.  Took them out again and re-gapped them to .045 and it ran
fine....

Do we need to run .045 gaps with unleaded gas?  Do I need to start
running pertronix ignitions on all my old engines?  Or just convert them
all to propane?  I had a 4 cycle dip in the generator current when I hit
it with a 10KW load to set the frequency.  My new 15KW Onan only had a
.5 cycle dip with the load.  I now wonder if I would re-gap the plugs to
.045 would the response be better and have less frequency dip.?