9N Tough Start (or not at all) Rough Running, Stalling

Cboc33

New User
A few weeks back my 9N was working without any problems, and following a couple hours of work, it suddenly stalled out. It sounded as though it ran out of fuel, so the next morning I filled it with fresh fuel and started it up, but it was running very rough and missing frequently. I let it idle for a little while and it was running rougher and rougher. So I did the following over the past couple weeks:

Drained the fuel and filled with fresh gas.
Pulled the Carb, cleaned it, reinstalled it.
Replaced the plugs, gapped and spark to each plug.
Pulled the distributor, gapped the points to spec, made sure it was timed correctly.

Following the above, I made an effort to fire it back up multiple times in-between each task.

I narrowed everything back to an assumed fuel problem with the old carb, so I replaced the carb with a brand new one (yes, fuel gets to the carb, as well as air).

After installing the new carb which took a week to arrive the tractor fired right up and ran very rough, and got rougher and rougher until it stalled out. At this exact moment it will not start.

After all the appropriate troubleshooting, I have another theory as to what it could be, but I would like to see if someone here suggests it.
 
Check and make sure you have a good blue/white spark that jumps a 1/4 inch gap or more. At all 4 plugs.
If you have that then pull the carb drain plug and make sure you have a good steady flow of gas that will fill a pint jar in under 3 minutes
 
Thank you, yes, fuel flow is as described, and the spark is strong. I actually swapped out the coil previously.
 
Also make sure you have the firing order correct it can be easy to mix the plug wires up at the cap and if you do so they can be hard to start
 
Ive been through the wires several times just for that reason. They are all correct. I believe I am beyond the "forehead to palm" problems as I know this tractor very well and have been through and over it dozens of times over the years. This particular situation has me completely baffled.
 
Low compression can also cause major run problems. Any thing lower then 90PSI make then hard to start and run well if at all
 
How are you testing for quality spark?
Adjustable gap spark tester would be my choice. $8
Although it would be very strange to make one suddenly die
while running, a compression test wouldn't hurt and its free.
Since you've changed so much, if you have good spark, I
would be very tempted to put the old carb back on and see
what happens. New ones don't come pre-adjusted and tested.
 
Just for assurance, jumper around the ignition switch. It's easy to do and will take that potential problem out of the equation.
 

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