Diagnosing A Bad Ignition Condenser On a Homelite Super XL Chainsaw!

A bad condenser can cause a variety of symptoms ranging from: failure to achieve full high rpm revs, popping or cut-out at high revs, visible spark on a plug but failure to fire in the cylinder or no spark at all. Many ignition issues are mistaken as carburetor issues and they can be hard to distinguish. With this saw, the park was weak enough that it couldn't achieve full rpm without a pronounced stutter/cut-out. However if you checked spark with just a spark pug, it looked fine! It wasn't until a proper spark testing tool was used that the symptoms started to appear.