my 2001 johnson cuts off when it gets warm. wont start again until it has cooled. power pack the culprit?

Q: someone told me it was the ignition switch so i replaced it. still the same problem. someone said check the gas. i did. no water, no sludge. leaving me to my next question, is it the power pack. no absolutely nothing about them. a friend of mine said that when they go bad they will work while cool then warm and the coils will spread out causing problems. any truth to this????

A: could be powerpack, have been known to have temperature-related failures. to confirm, do this: after the engine warms up, when it's not starting, pull a spark plug, reattach it to the boot, hold it against the engine block and look for spark while somebody turns the engine over with the key. Use a plastic or insulated tool to avoid getting shocked. If it's powerpack you'll get no spark on any cylinder. power pack is likely culprit especially if your motor has the fast start feature (look for black/white wire running from temp switch to powerpack). There's maybe a couple other possibilities but that's most likely. If you do get a spark, then suspect the carb float valves are sticking open and flooding the engine -- carb rebuild with new kits is the answer in that case. The powerpack is a capacitor that powers the primary windings of the ignition coils. The coils are completely separate components -- one coil per cylinder -- connected to the powerpack via orange wires. The spark plug leads originate from the coils -- very unlikely for all the coils to go bad at the same time.

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