I have a Ranger here, not sure on the size 500 maybe. Single cylinder carbureted. Cranks but wont fire. The carb has been gone through by a dealer, new spark plug, spark will jump about a 1" gap, fuel pump works fine, valves have been adjusted, compression is at about 150. It wont even pop on starting fluid. Thinking it is possibly out of time, but don't see a convenient way to check it and don't want to go pulling everything apart if someone may have an easy solution I may be over looking,

 

Remove air intake between carb and air filter.place open palm(of hand) over mouth of carb and crank over engine. You should have a pretty strong suction and it should leave a fair amt of fuel in carb.it also lets you know the valves are doing their job.If its a weak suction or tends to blow instead of suck your cam may be worn out.An easy way to check cam is: remove valve cover and crank over engine while watching the valves "dip".Nine times out of ten if the cam is bad, the exhaust rocker will barely move because the cam's exhaust lobe is worn down.Hope this helps>

 

Thanks for the response, I should have posted that I figured it out. I usually do so others may benefit from the solution as well. The utv was in serious need of a valve adjustment. If I recall it was primarily on the exhaust side, but all 4 were out of spec. The main challenge was the "bucket" style pucks. I had to order several of them and return the unused, despite my attempt to figure the math out.