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I was mowing the grass today with my 1976 Victa 92908, everything going smoothly as usual, when the engine stopped: no prior symptoms, just a total instantaneous cessation of firing. Naturally I checked for spark, and there wasn't any. Closer inspection showed that the plug lead was pinched between the cooling cowl and the governor base. If you look at the picture above, you'll see where the lead is supposed to come out, through a matching formed recess in both cowl and governor base. Mine was about an inch to the left of there, and considerably squashed. Removed the cowl retaining bolt directly above the spark plug, repositioned the lead, and the engine started instantly and ran with its usual silky smoothness.

The strange thing is that I haven't touched that cowl in nine months - last time it was off was for some surgery on the PulsaJet, see this thread:
https://www.outdoorking-forum.com.au/forum/u...ds=Diagnostics&Search=true#Post22526

As you can see in the picture, there is a tiny clearance between the cowl and the governor base in the location where the wire was being pinched. I'm guessing that the rubbery stuff slowly thinned over time until the high tension exceeded the insulating capacity of the very thin layer that was left. So, I lost close to ten minutes mowing time by the time I did the diagnostics, fixed it, and put the tools away. It could have been worse, but it was a very silly mistake to have made.