We have an older lt80 that has been a pain in the rear for the past couple summers, mostly crab issues. Anyways, this summer I thought I finally had it figured out. It ran great for several weeks. Then it just quit. Now, it will start and run when cold, but as it heats up, you can feel it losing power until it dies after about 5-10 minutes. Then it just cranks and cranks but won't start. Let it cool down for an hour or two and it will start up again. Only thing is it takes a bit of cranking and choke along with holding the throttle open. I pulled the cylinder and while it definitely shows some wear, it doesn't look that bad. It doesn't look bad enough to make it not run. Ive seen worse. Anyway, I'm stumped.


Any ideas?

 

Do a compression test. You'll find it low IMO.

 

THanks! Since I have the cylinder off, I was just going to put a cylinder and piston kit from eBay on it. For $49.99, I figure its worth a shot. Any opinion on those kits? it says it is Zoom-Zoom brand. I was a little Leary about it being cheap Chinese garbage.

 

LT80 is the expert on these machines, but I would have thought that, for the engine to give up altogether when hot, it is more likely to be an electrical problem. Early LT80s had only two coils, the exciter in the flywheel and the combined coil/CDI. I recon one of them will be faulty. Did you change the plug, it could just be that.

 

I've used the cheapo kits. They seem fine.
Merryman, I do agree. There is a good chance that there is a coil/cdi problem.
A cpl things he said just makes me think it's compression.
Guess we'll find out.

 

Thanks guys. I'll order the cylinder kit and see what happens.

 

did the kit work?

 

LMAO.. 4 years later.. and the kits are junk. I thought they would be ok.. not...…….The pistons are scrap.